This is actually expanding from a Facebook post, but going into new territory for this blog, insofar as I haven't previously discussed being in therapy here, I don't think. I don't think that's something I can go into a lot of detail about too often or anything, but I do think this particular concept is useful to talk about.
What I'm working on lately in therapy is self-compassion. Words like self-compassion are why therapy can sound like a lot of hug-yourself rigmarole, I know, and that's one reason it took so long for me to find a therapist I was comfortable with (and admit the need for therapy), but bear with me here.
The broad strokes of the backstory that you need to understand are that I was abused as a kid, intermittently over a period of years in a series of instances involving multiple abusers (only one abuser at a time, to be clear, none of them relatives; so many books aimed at child abuse survivors, especially male ones, are aimed at survivors of incest, because it's so commonly the case). As is typically the case with male victims, I didn't begin really dealing with this until my late thirties -- I didn't "forget," these aren't recovered memories, I just didn't deal with it.
The effects of abuse are not always the obvious ones. I have all kinds of jumpiness tics -- I have trouble sitting with my back to the door, if someone wakes me up I wake up fast and violently, I have what they call an exaggerated startle response. These are things you might start to think of if you were to make a list predicting the adult-onset effects of childhood trauma. Other things I think are less predictable unless you have experience in this area, like my habit of self-judgment.
In therapy, we keep coming back to one of the examples that I used when I first brought up the problem I was having: the awesome pan Caitlin got me. So let me use that to explain.
Caitlin got me this awesome pan. It was a non-stick pan with high sides, big enough to cook a couple burgers or chops on, high enough to cook tomato sauce or curry in ... basically, I found out quickly that I could use it for almost anything, and it was such a joy to cook with that I cooked everything in it. Sure, it aged a little like all pans do, especially since I was using it multiple times a day, but it held up remarkably well.
Until I braised beef shanks in it.
One of the things you aren't supposed to do is cook bones in it, especially if you're braising, where the bones can move around. The bones scrape the nonstick coating. When they're braising, and moving around, they scrape it a lot.
That one meal ended the pan. And this is the nature of nonstick pans (especially the good ones): they don't go from "great non-stick pans" to "decent non-stick pans" to "eh, decent pans." They go from "non-stick pans" to "very very sticky pans." Once you ruin a non-stick pan, it doesn't become as mediocre as your other pans, it becomes worse than them. The pan was unusable except to boil water -- and even then, pasta would stick to the bottom if I cooked too much of it.
It took me a long time to throw that pan out.
When I finally did, I felt horribly guilty. I had felt guilty about ruining it anyway -- ruining a gift! -- but I felt worse for throwing it away, even though I couldn't use it and it was taking up space in our tiny kitchen which we had just put considerable effort into rearranging -- we had just bought new furniture, relocated the liquor cabinet to a different room, moved the appliances and changed what went in which cabinet ... all to maximize the little bit of space in there ... and yet I couldn't bring myself to throw out the largest pan in the kitchen, or even to put it in the loft for storage, even though I never used it and never would. And I waited until she wasn't home to throw it out!
Caitlin did not feel bad about me throwing it away at all. She was not at any time mad at me for ruining the pan, and pointed out that I had used it so much that I had gotten more value out of it than a lot of other kitchen things we own.
But I felt terribly guilty and ashamed for ruining this pan. I still feel bad when I think about it.
There are many mechanisms feeding into this. The one that ties the most directly into self-compassion is this: it is very difficult for me to feel sadness.
That sounds crazy.
I know it sounds ridiculous, especially when I say I didn't really realize it until I was 40, but the sort of "sadness algorithm" for me has worked like this:
* SADNESS EVENT occurs.
* SADNESS begins.
* SADNESS truncated, as SELF-JUDGMENT kicks in, flooding the system with SHAME, GUILT, or sometimes ANGER.
So, something that causes sadness occurs, I feel negative emotions, and I think "well, I'm feeling sad about this," but it's not actual sadness I'm feeling. Even typing this, it sounds nuts, or it sounds like something that should have been obvious. But you feel bad, so maybe you need a third party to point out that it's not the context-appropriate flavor of bad.
To underscore the point here: I don't just feel disproportionate shame or guilt in response to shame- or guilt-provoking events; I also feel shame or guilt instead of most other negative emotions. (Anger is easier to feel than sadness, but it's also easy to direct back on myself.)
Self-judgment is the, like, engine that powers the machines doing all of this. I don't wallow in problems and feel like I'm the only one they happen to, but I do over-identify with them and feel like they are the result of my choices, character, or inaction, rather than bad luck or the actions of other agents.
Self-compassion, then, is the alternative, or the healthy thing that is supposed to be happening instead. Self-compassion is the ability to respond to ruining the pan by saying "oh shit, my favorite pan, now I can't cook with my favorite pan anymore, this fucking sucks," and feeling sad about it, instead of getting angry at myself for it. This is the thing I need to work on. Without talking too much about my history of abuse here, it is true that I have not, historically, done a very good job about letting myself feel sad about it having happened, as opposed to angry with myself for not having prevented it. So there are a lot of seeds there. And I won't lie, even typing that, the angry part of me is nodding and saying, well yes, you should be angry. This is something I'm working on, not something I have fixed. It's something I'm still only now learning to see.
When I posted about this on Facebook, thinking this was some crazy thing nobody else has trouble with, enough other people responded with "oh yeah, I talk about that in therapy too" that I thought I would post something more expansive, because who knows, maybe this is a problem for somebody else too, and you've just never heard it articulated.
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