Several weeks ago I received an
email from a subscriber who wrote, in part: “… Some of your thought processes
are not very pretty and sometimes conflicting. Why do you share on such an
intimate level? ...”
It’s a good question and those
of you that are subscribing to this free weekly message deserve to know a
little more about me. It may help you interpret or integrate these messages
into your own life. Conversely, it may cause you to decide to run for your
life!
I am a recovering alcoholic with
over 25 years of sobriety. I used to be an active Presbyterian minister. Today,
I remain very spiritual, but not very religious. Those who have read my book
and/or listened to my Audio CD already know this.
Several years into AA’s program
of recovery, where the acceptance I found transformed my life and accomplished
what all the religious dogma and biblical studies never did, I relived a
repressed memory from my days in high school. A girl became rather sweet on me
and, during a band trip, shared how much she both respected and liked me. All
the time she was telling me this, I remembered thinking to myself: “The me she
believes she’s talking to isn’t the real me.” Exploring this memory, I
discovered that that experience was a classic symptom of toxic shame – a phrase coined by John Bradshaw in his book Healing the Shame that Binds You. 1988.
It was a very, very sick feeling
– believing that my “me” that you responded to wasn’t really me. And if it was not
really me, then who was it? Who was I? I had no earthly idea, other than knowing
I had this hollow empty feeling deep inside that I was living a lie and was a very
incomplete person. Unlike you.
In AA meetings I heard many
different people describe this same feeling as “…having a hole in your soul.”
Very apt, I believe. How do I fill that hole? Honesty – real honesty. I found honesty in meetings, with my sponsor, working
the steps, making amends.
In AA meetings for the first
time in my life, I experienced the ability to be really me, nothing held back,
and still feel supported and accepted. That totally transformed me. I will never be able to repay the Fellowship of
Alcoholics Anonymous for that tremendous gift of Grace God gave me – speaking
through the voices in those rooms.
In personal computing there is a
term used in conjunction with printer technology called WYSIWYG (“What you see
is what you get”). That’s exactly what I want to be in my life. That’s the only
way I can feed the real me and starve
the feeling that I have a hole in my soul.
So I want to restate the
concluding paragraphs from an anonymous author who published, through the
Hazelden Foundation Press, a booklet entitled Shame: Understanding and Coping, 1981, pp. 61-62 [ISBN:
0-89486-131-X]. This author says, much better than I, what I’m trying to
communicate.
“…I would like to share with
you in [the] conclusion [of this pamphlet], and out of gratitude, something
that I came across recently. Its author called it ‘an alcoholic’s meditation on
honesty, pain, and shame’:
“Honesty involves exposure: the
exposure of self-as-feared that leads to the discovery of self-as-is. Both of
these selves are essentially vulnerable: to be is to be able to hurt and to be
hurt. But something tells us that we should not hurt: that we should neither
hurt others nor hurt within ourselves. Yet we do – both hurt and hurt, both
cause and feel pain.
“When we cause pain, we
experience guilt; when we feel pain, we suffer shame. The pain, the hurt, the
guilt of the first is overt: it exists outside of us, ‘objectively.’ The pain,
the hurt, the shame of the second is hidden: it gnaws within, it is
‘subjective.’ Neither can be healed without confronting the other. A bridge is
needed – a connection between the hurt that we cause and the hurt that we are.
“That bridge cannot be built
alone. The honesty that is its foundation must be shared. A bridge cannot have
only one end. Without sharing, there can be no bridge. But a bridge needs a
span as well as foundations. The bridge’s span is vulnerability – the capacity
to be wounded, the ability to know hurt. ‘I need’ because ‘I hurt.’ – if
deepest need is honest. What I need is another’s hurt, another’s need. Such a
need on my part would be ‘sick’ – if the other had not the same need of me, of
my hurt and my need. Because we share hurt, we can share healing. Because we
know need, we can heal each other.
“Our mutual healing will be
not the healing of curing, but the healing of caring. To heal is to make whole.
Curing makes whole from the outside: it is good healing but it cannot touch my deepest
need, my deepest hurt – my shame, the dread of myself I harbor within. Caring
makes me whole from within: it reconciles me to myself-as-I-am: not-God,
beast-angel, human. Caring enables me to touch the joy of living that is the
other side of my shame, of my not-God-ness, of my humanity.
“But I can care, can become
whole, only if you care enough – need enough – to share your shame with me.”
I share with you as intimately
as I dare because I have to. That’s who I am. That is the road to my salvation
and to my humanity. Honesty. Exposing who I am. Risking the vulnerability that
entails. I do this because the alternative – living a lie, projecting a “self”
that is not truly me – is no longer an option if I want to be alive.
Thanks for listening, and – as
always – feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those
accompanying you on your spiritual journey.
Don
#5 September, 2012
Copyright, 2012
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