A shame attack

Do you ever really feel sad about some of the choices you have made?  Even if you did not make them in fully consciousness?  Sometimes when I return to my house here that I bought when I was so stressed by my older sister’s illness I just feel so sad.  I just was out at the local shopping centre and coming up the escalator on the other side was a friend who is in sobriety and went to school with me.  I started to get a shame attack driving home  because I am aware that I stopped going to my AA meetings quite a few years ago. I moved away from the recovery community and got very swept up in my family issues after breaking with my ex partner.  I focused not on group work but on just living a very solitary life surrounded by things.  I got my dog Jasper who has been a constant source of comfort and apart from that I have kept myself fairly solitary and to be honest at times I do feel very lost.

There was a lot of trauma in my past, so maybe things could not have been any different to the way they worked out.  I chose to pursue one on one therapy instead of 12 step recovery and I had a tough time in Al Anon when I went there as I was constantly being told I wasn’t allowed to share any of my addiction recovery story  I was supposed to keep that separate and then I saw the way others were at times shut down when they were trying to deal with the pain of emotionally damaged parents, so I got angry and made the decision to walk away, but to be honest lately I am missing the group involvement.   And questioning deeply the way my own path has worked out.

I don’t want to be full of shame when I compare myself to my friend.  I have maintained a healthy sobriety for some years now but at times I wonder about the level of my own narcissism.  I wonder how much I just see things from my perspective instead of considering deeply how it is from the perspective of others whose paths have intersected with mine.  And particularly with my sister now back in hospital I am questioning ways I reacted to what felt like abuse and invalidation and made things harder for her.   I share this with my therapist but she reminds me I have a tendency to make myself into the ‘bad’ one. I am the one who does not do enough, even though I try, but lately I question how much of it is honestly coming from my heart,  at times my sister annoys me, at other times I just really value our connection.  I need to remember she is walking her own path and it does not have to be like mine.  I just have seen her go through so many different meds now, they have her back on Lithium again and I try to support her decisions as a friend of mine was put on it a few years ago and believes it really helped her to improve her mood. Its just that I have never chosen to take those kind of meds even under pressure from my oncologist.

Anyway sometimes it just helps to externalise my thought processes here, especially on a day when I come home drenched in shame and question how much of it is just my inner critic beating me up.   And sometimes I think the fact that I have so much time on my hands is not always great for if I don’t keep focused and occupied at times I can tend to overthink things and my thinking most often can run on negative lines.  I am trying to notice judgements accompanying thoughts and feelings more since reading the book on calming emotional storms.  Judging others can tend to make us more angry or resentful and often we don’t know what has happened in other peoples’ life.

Yesterday and today there was a great radio interview on the Radio National programme Life Matters with a man who has recently published a book in which he explored the neuroscience of the seven deadly sins.  What he had to say was so interesting.  He said that those who are angry and resentful often have some kind of painful trauma history and we should learn to be patient and loving to them.  He stated that narcissists carry far more of their own emotional pain which affects certain parts of the brain.  They don’t deserve admonishment but compassion and understanding.  He was telling the story of a guy who came to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park in London swearing and cursing and when the author of the book who was there turned around and gave him a big hug apparently the guy just melted in his arms.  I am going to try and find a link to the podcast on the author his name is Jack Lewis and the name of the book is The Science of Sin,  it was a very enlightening interview in two parts.  We often don’t know the full story that underlies another person’s reactions to things but we can always question and find more peace if we limit our tendency to judge them and even ourselves at time for our inherent human flaws and foibles.

You can listen to the podcast by following this link :

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/the-science-of-sin—part-1/10422572

The interview (that particular story came out of the second part which may not be provided in the above link) really made me smile.   I guess we all do things we aren’t that proud of at times.  At times we look back at the fact we felt angry or resentful about something or see difficult choices we made out of not so ideal conditions and life and mistakes can only be understood backwards in a life that we have to live in the present armed at times with only minimal support or understanding.  We do the best we know how at the time and there is always the change to make changes if we are humble enough to find out there are other ways to go about things once we have the benefit and wisdom hindsight.