full of ourselves : dealing with and facing the wound of our disempowered or devalued Self

It is very hard living with the feeling (even if) unconscious that we are not allowed to be ourselves, to feel into the depths of ourselves, to express the whole of ourselves to know the nature of the wound ourselves.. And how often do so many of us end up splintered or in fragments with essential pieces of who we are split off into what is known psychologically as ‘the shadow’.

I am re-reading parts of an excellent book on this written by a lady called Sylvia Brinton Perera, a therapist who also wrote The Scapegoat Complex which really helped me to understand how addicts so often end up with this kind of complex, loaded up with an inner shame that in so many ways represses and derails our development particularly in families which neither attune to us emotionally, nor give us a platform for expression, and may actively repress us, or load us up with toxic shame or other feelings of humiliation or frustration deeply internalized with little way out.

I was having a conversation with my sister about this yesterday after also reading parts of Anita Moorjani’s book Sensitive Is The New Strong that I have been sharing about in my blog lately..The portion I was reading to her was on the disempowered self. As Anita explains (and was most certainly true for her before she became ill with terminal lymphoma and died only to come back to life again) it seems that so many of us empaths born with heightened sensitivity who were misunderstood or neglected in childhood end up with a very shaky, porous, empty, devalued or collapsed ego. Complex PTSD therapist Pete Walker calls this kind of traumatic reaction to abuse and neglect or shame the fawn response.

Some of the symptoms of the disempowered self also go along with what may happen to us after suffering narcissistic abuse.. they are as follows

. A reluctance to taking care of ourselves.

. Treating others better than you treat yourself

. A reluctance (or fear) of being seen and heard.

. Resistance to taking on challenges due to fear of failing.

. Fear of disapproval (or approval seeking.)

. Being highly critical of your self.

. Feeling unworthy of receiving compliments, or gifts, or anything good.

Living with this sense of disempowerment can be hard, taking the risk to turn it around may come with a lot of anxiety and fear as well as inner shaming voices that ark up as we try to become ‘bigger for our boots’ or more full of our true selves, taking the scary risk to express repressed feelings as well as own our power needs and natural reactions to devaluing such as anger and rage.

In the book by therapist Sylvia Brinton Perera The Irish Bull God :Image of Multiform and Integral Masculinity that I began speaking about at the start of this blog she addresses this process of becoming full and facing anger or rage in the following paragraphs.

psychological material to be assimilated needs to be sought in (the) devalued and spurned shadow places. Ego identity will be endangered, as it was for (those) clients, by being swollen beyond (their) own habitual and safe knowing of itself. .. this (rejected) stuff swells our hitherto shrunken sense of identity until we may feel fat and foolish and excited and emotional, and fear to spill out sloppily by raging or crying or babbling or peeing and shitting all over. This lack of containment feels monstrous, and we equate it with regression, a childish lack of control. It is certainly childlike and passionate. It is also life affirming, for it holds the potential to grow us beyond shame into regal authority.

In therapy… (this) is often experienced as getting fat with entitlement, daring the bigness that is necessary to overcome the distortions of repressive development to claim the spaciousness of identity that we are meant (as souls) to incarnate. It is very important not to label this as an inflation – a psychological term for the equally inappropriate scolding, “Too big for your britches.” Such expansion does not represent an illusory inflation, for it is a regality rite (of the Sun and Leo) and developmentally necessary..(it also allows us to) .. readily release what no longer serves us but may fertilize other processes.

This confident claim forms the basis of authentic, voluntary simplicity and altruism. Such authenticity serves the life process, not (a) righteous ideal with which we might swell our identity in order to feel superior to others (via a sense of righteousness.. often projected before our shadow stuff becomes fully conscious)…

The painful process of converting (our) shadow material into ever renewable energy continues throughout life. It can add psychological compost to the soil of each new season’s crops. It can release us from the heaviness of our unassimilated complexes to walk with the (positive masculine life force) as we co-operate with the feminine processes of life as well.

What she is speaking of here is the processing of all of our shadow material even as it may at times, also get projected out onto others in terms of righteous judgement.. before we have fully made our peace with and integrated it.. recognizing the projection process is all a part of us becoming more integrated and taking on more of our own rejected needs for positive self expression or healthy narcissism while not passing back the wound of devaluing others right to their path and process.

It is my belief that over time we can find ways to re-empower the disempowered Self, we can learn to stop devaluing the Self as we find ways to move towards a growing sense of self acceptance, self maturation and more positive healthy life and emotional expression.

This is at times a very fraught process which may require of us the feeling of, expression of, as well as the ongoing metabolization of many primal, intense and often difficult feelings such as rage. As a result of the working through of it we may come to a similar realization that one of Sylvia’s clients did:

“I’ve always been more ready to be angry at authority than to claim it.”

This particular man reached this insight only after years of inner work that led him to understand the depth of the wound in his own heart that he had experienced as a direct result of his father’s abandonment of him in childhood. Imagining that wound at first as a void and later along in his healing visualizing it as filled with stars..

Thus does the full experiencing of the impact of the wounding and punishing dimensions of our shame, disempowerment and/or resentment over consenting (albiet unconsciously) to this own devaluing on an internal level or then projecting out become the birthplace of our healing, wisdom birthing, and growth in insight.. This can only happen as we find the courage and means of expansion that allow us to become full of all of these shame and shadow contents as we wrestle over time to incorporate them into the wholeness of our Self.