Shame causes so much suffering.
We don’t feel worthy.
We feel unlovable.
We put up walls.
We hide behind them.
To mask the shame.
Childhood is a delicate time.
Our identify is being formed… and once it’s formed, we carry it with us our whole life. It takes a lot of work to un-form our identity. When we see ourselves as defective or unlovable or not good enough, we spend our lives trying to compensate.
Some people never share it, never reveal it, never look at it, not even with their spouses or partners or kids or siblings. They just live with it. Suffer in silence. But it never goes away. Not until we work through it. Not until we accept it. Embrace the pain. And learn to accept ourselves. Talk about it. Share it. Drag it into the open, expose it to the light of truth.
Our biggest fear is whether people would really accept us if they really knew who we were, our deepest shame, shortcomings, fears. Would people really accept us.
We are terrified that if we revealed our true self, we would be judged and rejected.
We are self destructive because we want to prove how unworthy we are to ourselves
A father’s and mother’s love is so critical for making us feel whole and loved and accepted. It is foundational.
You can’t mask the shame and hurt. Nothing helps.
The more we try, the more we fail. It’s a bottomless pit.
It’s very hard to give love we never received. It’s hard to love ourselves, if we never felt loved. And it makes it very very difficult to love and accept others, if we never felt loved and accepted.
And it becomes generational.
Humanity is naturally selfish.
Raising and socializing a healthy child requires selfless love, which teaches them to be unselfish and trust others, and learn what it means to be a family, a unit, who cares and protects each other and works together, to teach them to depend on each other when there is struggle, to accept each other as a valuable and worthy member of the family.
When a person is hurt by others, they go into survival mode, and learn not to depend on others. Surviving becomes selfish. It’s natural to want to survive. We isolate our feelings. We stop depending on others. We stop trusting. The more hurt, the more selfish. And they less love we feel. The less acceptance.
The more love we have for each other, the less selfish we become.
The irony is that we cannot survive on our own. We need love and acceptance. We need to trust others. We need to depend on others for support. No one can raise themselves. No one can function in society without trusting others when they’re most vulnerable.
It’s difficult to teach this love if we never received it.
Family is forever.
Family is the ultimate commitment.
Not being accepted by your family, by those you need most, and not feeling worthy or valued by them, or feeling like it’s conditional… it’s one of the greatest sources of suffering in this world.
William Dare 