Brave New Kitty

I’ve felt “different” my whole life. As a child, I wasn’t very good at making friends and I got teased a lot. As a teenager, I was painfully shy and awkward. I hated school and felt like a complete outsider, and continued to get teased. (Thank god for drugs and older boyfriends.) As a young adult, my social life revolved around drugs and alcohol. I believed myself incapable of attending social functions without social lubrication. So I mostly went to bars, keggers, and rock concerts. I had a few friends, mostly buds I got high with, and the crowd I hung with depended on my boyfriend du jour. I was never good at finding my own people. I was, am, and always will be an introvert.

There is no shame in being an introvert. As my dear therapist Richard used to say, it just means your primary role at parties is “listener.” And that’s absolutely true, if that’s all there is to it. That wasn’t the case for me.

For me, connecting with people usually meant a terrible case of self-hatred afterwards. I’d replay the tape in my head endlessly and beat myself up mercilessly for all the stupid things I said or did. I would lay in bed and cringe until I passed out, then ruminate over whatever I could remember the next day. The raw feeling would ease after a while, but it would inevitably happen all over again the next time I tried to connect with someone. And this was the rule, not the exception; to this day I wonder how I got past that and made the friends I was able to make.

After I got sober, this problem only got worse. I was engaging in the same behaviors—not knowing how to do anything differently yet—but being sober made the emotional pain more acute. Anything could set me off: sharing at AA meetings, a therapy session, an interaction at work. The simplest conversation could cause me to feel awful about myself for days, isolate, and question my worth as a human being. The first few times I went through this, I understood why the relapse rate is so high—who wants to feel like this?? But for me, relapse wasn’t an option. I knew I’d found something better than I’d had no matter how bad I was feeling, and I intuited that these awful feelings were the reason I became an addict in the first place. My only option was to figure out what was going on.

I’d first learned about shame back when I was reading Adult Children of Alcoholics books in my early 20s. Now that I was sober and dealing with my issues in earnest, I returned to that idea. I found a few great books on the subject (Healing the Shame that Binds You, by John Bradshaw, and Shame: The Power of Caring, by Gershen Kaufman) and discovered that shame was, indeed, my issue.

Shame is what causes you to feel inferior, less-than, and unworthy. It’s more than an emotion. It’s a belief system that you are somehow a bad, undeserving, unlovable person. If you believe this about yourself, it makes perfect sense that when you interact with other people, the voice in your head tells you you don’t measure up.

What a terrible place to be.

If there was one word I would have used to describe myself, it was unlovable. I really believed that anybody who got to know me couldn’t possibly love me. And it was this belief, and the resulting negative emotions, that caused me to go that dark place, not introversion or feeling different. Introversion is merely a personality type, a description with neither a positive or negative connotation. Feeling different is part of the human condition, also neither good nor bad. Neither of these were the cause of my bad connecting experiences and sense of isolation. It was shame.

I’m not saying that if I hadn’t been shame-based, all my reaching out experiences would have been positive. That is not possible. But because I was so shameful, it was easy for me to blame myself whenever things went awry. Of course it was my fault. I’m unlovable. I’m a bad person. I’m fundamentally incapable of forming healthy relationships with other human beings. And I don’t deserve good things.

It took me a long time and a lot of work to get past these beliefs. Oh, they’re still in there, but they’re no longer my default view. I have to really be jarred to go there. But when I do, I don’t go as deep and I don’t stay as long. I no longer assume my unlovability is the problem, and I now have tools to take care of myself. The easiest and most helpful one is telling a safe person how I’m feeling. So simple, yet so powerful. And it makes sense, because if shame is what makes us feel isolated, then breaking that isolation should alleviate it.

If you grew up in an invalidating family (whether addiction was involved or not), there’s a good chance you have shame issues. If so, you must address them if you want to feel better about yourself. Shame, the belief that we are unlovable, is a lie. And it’s no way to go through life. If you have any of these symptoms:

• feeling out-of-body when talking to someone and/or chastising yourself afterward,
• being unable to look a person in the eye,
• feeling isolated, hopelessly different, or unlovable,

then you probably have some shame issues. Educate yourself (read!), deal with your addictions, find a good therapist, and develop a support network. Having even one person you feel safe with can make all the difference in the world.

If you have shame issues, connecting with people can feel like a big, scary, terrible burden. It’s easier to remain aloof. But the real burden is how bad you feel about yourself; efforts to connect merely exacerbate that underlying truth. When you deal with that truth, connecting will take on an entirely different dynamic, one full of promise and possibility. It won’t always feel good, and you won’t always make wise choices, but when you can flub it up and feel okay about yourself anyway, it will make all the effort worthwhile.

When I was in a group therapy, we talked a lot about the concept of “getting little.” It happens in reaction to stress or fear, and it means that, emotionally, you’ve just regressed to a very young age. Sometimes just being around certain people, or even people who remind you of certain people, or events, can trigger it. It’s related to, perhaps even a version of, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and is almost always accompanied by intense shame. It’s a common stress reaction for people, particularly women, who grew up in invalidating or abusive environments. In fact, it’s so common, it’s surprising how many people don’t know what it is, much less when they’re experiencing it.

All of us in the group were familiar with “getting little,” although none of us had a name for it before we got there. Giving it a name made it easier to talk about and went a long way toward eliminating the shame that accompanied it. In fact, I think learning to deal with “getting little” was one of the most useful concepts I took away from therapy.

When you “get little,” you are literally unable to think or reason as your adult self. Your fear, anger, or shame—or some combination of all three—becomes so overwhelming that you can’t see past it. You’ve switched into survival mode, fight or flight; your logic and reason are not accessible. On some level, you feel your life is in danger, however irrational that may be. For example, if when you were small your father’s anger usually led to physical abuse, you may become irrationally afraid when someone you’re close to in the present gets angry. Intellectually you know that it doesn’t make sense, you know that your emotional reaction is “too big” for the situation, but every time it happens, you feel that familiar, overpowering sense of panic taking over, and you feel absolutely powerless to stop it.

It’s a terrible feeling. But that’s not even the worst part. When it happens, you can say or do things that you would not normally say or do. Afterwards, the shame from being out of control can be crippling, and it can be incredibly difficult to forgive yourself and get on with your life, much less connect with the people you’re closest to. This can be true even if your overreaction is to shut down rather than lash out; either way, the shame kicks in. Getting little can be a vicious cycle of impulsivity, shame, and remorse that can take a long, long time to break free of.

Recognizing it when it happens is the first step. When you find yourself feeling terrified, panicked, rageful, shut down, unable to think clearly, or otherwise powerless over your emotions, you have “gotten little.” Here are some suggestions for dealing with it:

1. Have a plan ahead of time. You won’t be able to think rationally when you are in the throes of “littleness.” This is why understanding what it is and why it’s happening is so important. During a time of calmness, make a plan to recognize it and know what to do when it happens. The following steps are what a plan might look like.
2. Honor the feelings. We have a tendency to be hard on ourselves when we get into this dark place, to dismiss the feelings because they’re irrational, and chastise ourselves for having them. This is not helpful. Instead, you have to understand that the feelings are there for a reason. Something very old and primitive inside you needs to heal, and it’s trying to get your attention. When it takes over, you must address it. The more you try to shove it aside and minimize its importance, the more demands it will make of you. This cycle of repression/denial is physically and emotionally draining, and takes its toll in all sorts of seemingly unrelated ways: anxiety, irritation, and physical symptoms of stress such as stomach problems, rashes, and getting sick a lot. So remember that above all, the feelings are real and you have to take them seriously if you want to get past them.
3. Immediately stop engaging in whatever is going on. Attempts to carry on a rational, adult conversation when you’re in this place are futile, and you know from experience that they rarely go well. Instead, you must step back and address what’s going on internally: What is the feeling? Why does it feel so big? What does it remind you of? What do you think triggered it? If the person you are with is safe, then tell him what’s happening—if you’ve included him in your plan, then he will be able to help you with your process. If the person is not safe, then simply excuse yourself and say you’ll finish the conversation later: do not allow yourself to be sucked back in. You could do some journaling at this point, or call someone who can help you work through your big feelings. Only when you’re calm and rational should you continue with what triggered the regression in the first place.
4. Deal with the shame. Shame makes us feel less-than; like we don’t matter and aren’t lovable or worth much of anything to anyone. This feeling is a lie, and the quickest way to get past it is to connect with a person who understands that. So connect with someone as quickly as you can and talk about what happened. But make sure it is a safe person. Don’t go to someone who will require an explanation or worse, a justification, of what’s going on. You should have two or three people on your call list who can fulfill this purpose (and you for them). This is in addition to the person you’re in conflict with, even if he is safe.

I stress “safe” people because when we have issues like this, it’s usually because we were raised in unsafe environments and never learned how to take care of ourselves very well emotionally. If we don’t consciously address the issue of unsafe people in our lives, we will often go to the very people who created the problem in the first place for comfort. It sounds crazy, but unless we teach ourselves not to, we often keep going back to the source hoping it will be different. Maybe someday it will be, but that is not helpful in dealing with your shame in the present. Being “unsafe” doesn’t necessarily mean our parents and siblings are bad people. It merely means that they are not able to understand our issues in a helpful way. So it’s generally a good idea to make a rule not to go to a family member for help. Find support people who understand the issues and speak the language of shame; that’s what I mean by “safe” people.

We all get little sometimes; nobody is immune to it, and it doesn’t mean everybody automatically needs therapy. But if it happens often, and if the accompanying shame makes it hard to forgive yourself, then you might want to get some help dealing with it. Having an intellectual understanding of getting little is essential to taking care of yourself when it’s happening, and perhaps more importantly, dealing with the accompanying shame.

“I’m the best compared to nobody” is a totally shame-free attitude. This means you live by your own standards of what’s important, your own chosen values. What other people are doing is fine, but it doesn’t really have any effect on your choices. You care about what those close to you think, but it doesn’t alter your fundamental sense of who you are. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

To explain what I mean by “shame-free,” I first have to talk about shame. Shame is the belief that you’re inherently flawed and somehow bad in a way that other people aren’t. It is not an emotion, like guilt, that can serve a useful purpose in letting you know when you’re out of line. Shame is a belief system, and it is a devastatingly inaccurate one. No one is inherently flawed or bad; that just isn’t how the universe works. Yet shame tells us we are.

People who grow up in invalidating environments tend to be shameful adults. An invalidating environment is one in which a child’s emotional needs go largely unmet. I don’t like the term abuse because that implies a specific type of treatment such as verbal, physical, or sexual assaults. While these are certainly invalidating in the most extreme way, they are not the only ways to invalidate. This is a very important idea. I often hear people say some version of “my childhood was fine and my parents were great” when it’s obvious that they’re struggling with deeply-rooted, unresolved issues. People think if there wasn’t overt abuse, they had good parenting. The truth is, children need lots of attention and support and encouragement to grow into shame-free, emotionally healthy adults. Most parents are simply not able to give children enough of these things, often because they didn’t get enough of them themselves as children and are unaware that a problem exists. These are not bad people, and my intent is not to accuse the world at large of bad parenting. It’s just a sad fact of life that most of us grow up without adequate emotional support, and if we want to become fully functioning adults, we have to deal with this difficult truth.

Not meeting his emotional needs sends a message to a child that he isn’t important. The child, lacking skills to objectively examine this message, tends to accept it and believe he is not important. This is how shame is born. The more this happens, the more we tend to believe we lack worth and must be flawed in some major way. As with other skills in our toolbox, shame is a survival mechanism. It allows us to accept the unacceptable. Without the shame mechanism, children would have no way to deal with their unmet needs, and shame thus becomes an internalized belief system. Unfortunately, when it’s no longer needed, it’s very hard to break free of. The grief and negative self-image that must be acknowledged in order to do so is often too overwhelming. It’s an understandable defense mechanism, but one that hinders emotional growth greatly.

How does comparison function as a manifestation of shame? When we are “in our shame,” i.e., feeling inferior and flawed, we compare ourselves to others. We’ve created a hierarchy in our minds to constantly remind ourselves of our place in the world. We see others’ success (more accurately, their perceived success), as a way to affirm our lower standing and inherent badness. Regardless of what we’re comparing—our bodies, our looks, our incomes, our popularity, our abilities—we always fall short. Unless, that is, we compare with the specific intention of feeling superior, which is the flip side of this hierarchy. Some friends of mine used to play a game called, “I’m glad I’m not that guy.” It’s pretty much what it sounds like. When they would see other men—they’re both men—who looked hard up or miserable, they’d point or nod and say, “I’m glad I’m not that guy,” then have a good laugh. It could be anybody: a homeless street person, a man with an overweight wife, someone in a wheelchair, etc. The point was to compare themselves with someone to whom they clearly felt superior; the unconscious motivation was to alleviate their shame.

My mother had a version of this game too. I remember many occasions when she compared herself or me to a stranger she was observing: “My butt isn’t as big as hers” or “You’re a lot prettier than that little girl.” Needless to say, I grew up with a lot of shame issues about my body and believed that self-worth was inexorably tied to one’s personal appearance.

Whether your intent is to affirm your lower or your superior standing in the hierarchy, you are acting out of shame when you do this. The need to compare yourself indicates a self-image based on external standards rather than internal values. Furthermore, the external standards don’t really exist; they are an interpretation based on the faulty belief system that there is a scale by which all people must be measured. Hierarchies do exist, and it is important to acknowledge and understand them. For example, there are physical hierarchies (atoms-molecules-cells-organisms), organizational hierarchies (private-corporal-lieutenant-captain-general), and value hierarchies (goodness and love are better than contempt and hatred). But there is no hierarchy for inherent worth. We are all valuable, we all have inherent worth, we are all creative beings with infinite potential. True, some of us are more actualized than others. But this is not about having more inherent worth. Ironically, shame, the very thing that causes us to compare ourselves with others, is also the thing that holds us back from reaching high levels of achievement. When we’re too focused on our standing (i.e., external standards), we lose sight of what’s really important: figuring out who we really are and what we really want.

There are many other manifestations of shame besides comparison (rage, perfectionism, and control, to name a few), but comparison to others in a self-worth hierarchy is a clear indication of shame issues. If you find yourself doing this, consider exploring shame further. Left unresolved, shame makes for a stagnant existence, one that never really gets out of first gear. It’s essential to educate yourself and get help—exposing shame to safe people is the most expeditious way to break free of it.

For further reading, I recommend two wonderful books: Shame: The Power of Caring by Gershen Kaufman, and Healing the Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw. These books take very different approaches to the topic, the former being an academic study and the latter being a self-help approach, but both quite good reading on the topic of shame.

“I’m the best compared to nobody” is a freeing, exhilarating, energizing, empowering place to be, recognizing your inherent value while respecting everyone else’s. It’s well worth all the work that might be necessary to get there.