Resolve Your Shame - Medium

This is a complex but incredibly powerful concept.

I probably won’t even do it justice here, but I gotta share what I’ve learned so far.

And it all begins with Abandonment.

The most impressionable time in an individual’s life is from birth to about the age of 5. In these first years, a child’s personality is most significantly influenced by his or her surroundings. It’s during this time that his/her paradigms begin to be established. Their world view, if you will.

As children between birth and the age of 5, we come into this world totally helpless and entirely dependent on others to recognize and respond to our needs in a timely manner. As a result of this dependency, every child’s greatest FEAR is abandonment.

To children, abandonment means death.

Additionally, children are ego-centered. This means that children inherently believe they’re the center of the universe and everything revolves around them. Therefore, children believe they are the cause of everything that happens to them — whether for good or for bad.

These 2 factors — FEAR of abandonment and ego-centeredness — create a powerful dynamic for all children. Whenever a child experiences any kind of abandonment, he will always believe that he is the cause of what has happened to him — he’s unable to process and take into account other people’s motivations and actions.

Examples of abandonment experiences are:

He’s hungry and no one feeds him
He cries and no one holds him
He’s lonely and no one pays attention to him
A parent neglects him
A parent shames him
A parent hits him
A parent doesn’t want him

Every child is born into an imperfect world and into an imperfect family therefore every child has abandonment experiences. Even though their belief that they’re the cause of these painful events is, in fact, an inaccurate interpretation of their life, children have no other way to understand the world.

This is where TOXIC SHAME comes from.

These abandonment experiences and the naive, ego-centered interpretation of them creates a belief in some young children that it is not acceptable for them to be who they are, just as they are. They conclude that there must be something wrong with them which causes the important people in their lives to abandon them. They have no way of comprehending that abandonment isn’t caused by something about them, but that it’s caused by the people who are supposed to recognize and meet their needs.

This naive and ego-centered interpretation of their abandonment experiences creates a psychological state called TOXIC SHAME. Toxic Shame is the belief that one is inherently bad, defective, different, or unlovable. It’s a deeply held core belief that one is bad.

It’s completely unfounded.

Seriously, have you ever felt unlovable?

Chances are, you have.

You see, if I speak for myself here, I have had this overwhelming core belief that I’m defective, different, and unlovable.

This, I now know, is because my Father (aka sperm donor) rejected me at birth.

This rejection lead me to grow up constantly wondering “why?” and “what’s wrong with me?”

I’m sharing all of this with the hope that it can help someone else too, because I feel like this is a breakthrough for me.

I’ve always felt like something must be wrong with me, or else why would he reject me?

On a profoundly deep psychological level, his rejection and my need to prove myself worthy have been my core motivation in Life.

Why’d I score above a 100% cumulative average in High School? To prove myself worthy.

Why’d I work so hard for football and track? To prove myself worthy.

Why was I class president? Why did i work so hard in college? Why do I want to filthy fucking rich?

Because I want to be BETTER THAN HIM. I am/was constantly striving to prove myself worthy of attention (that was never going to be there in the first place), to constantly shout, “Look what you left behind? PURE FUCKING GREATNESS!”

Look at me now. Just look at me now (Ed Bassmaster voice).

All DESPITE the rejection.

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Honestly, I don’t know if he would be a good father anyways, but somewhere in my mind I always thought he was the picture perfect Dad playing football with his ‘real family’… that very much could be the case, but it most likely was not. There’s a reason he abandoned me… and it had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with HIM… compulsive lying, being engaged to 2 different women at the same time, and generally not having big enough balls to man up and be a dad.

(The lies are the reason why I’m incredibly honest and straightforward — as you guys all know by now. Also, indefinite speech like the use of the word ‘soon’ in particular — I fuckin’ hate that shit! Totally weak and useless word that’s purely for gaslighting.)

All I know now is that I’ve determined the root cause of my own personal TOXIC SHAME, I can move forward confidently in the direction of my dreams with the knowledge that I am enough, I am lovable, and I am different — but in a good way.