Day 18 Shame prevails

dear community of like minded sufferers

I am always surprised how everyone is willing to talk about their pains, their improvements, their progress and lifestyle but almost never do I read about someone’s feelings or their big AHA moment of finding out about a repressed emotion that they have just uncovered. I hope this post sparks your interest in sharing a small story of what you overcame, what you repressed for so long that you we’re willing to suffer physically but not psychologically....

As I read through some of my diary entries so far the most common repressed emotion has been shame coupled with anger.

Shame about who I was as a teenager, shame about being me. Somehow along the way someone or many ones told me I was not good enough, and after a while i started believing it. This also comes along with a lot of anger against myself primarily for not standing up for myself and also anger towards all the people that made me be doubtful.

I somehow wished there was one single aha moment where someone specifically said something that made me feel not good enough but I believe it was more of a stream of events that added to this idea over time...

I am sad it happened that way. I am sad I wasn’t brave enough, I am sad I was too insecure to stand up against the bullies including members of my own family who were supposed to have my back. They did not! It makes me angry as hell when I think back to the people who made me feel ashamed for being me.... fuck them.

And fuck feeling ashamed and angry and insecure. Today I am sure I have a much better life than most of those people who made me feel like crap.

Fuck them. And fuck TMS.

Drops mic...
peace

 

Hopethishelps I was drawn to the beginning of your post about people generally not sharing their repressed emotions and experience of uncovering that repression. I am only at the beginning of my TMS journey and journalling etc. but in making lists of past events I have uncovered some things which I have repressed. Deep down I knew I had repressed these events and emotions but only now am I beginning to identify and hopefully resolve these issues. Only now am I also beginning to talk about them.

The first major past event which I have identified is the suicide of my best friend. This was over a decade ago and I know that I have never come to terms with it. I just buried it and never spoke about it again. I don't know how I'm going to overcome this but I guess the first step is in identifying it and then secondly talking about it so in a sense this is my first attempt at talking about it.

Sadly the second event I know that I also buried emotionally is again the death and suicide of another friend. I looked up to him a lot as he was a couple of years ahead of me in school. In many ways he was my idol during my teenage years.

A short time after this, another acquaintance from school died by suicide. He actually wasn't my friend but a person that I didn't see eye to eye with - our personalities just clashed. I carry a lot of guilt with me surrounding his death because of this. While many years had passed since our time in school I can't help but think if I had made more of an effort to get along with him then maybe his path could have been different. I know that this on an intellectual level probably doesn't make sense as we hadn't seen one another for 5/6 years but it is something that I struggle with. Again I don't know how to get past this but perhaps writing about it is the beginning.

 

Hi, I am sorry for what you have gone through. Loosing loved ones is by far the most painful event in life and loosing them to a suicide can definitely cause rage inside of you. Rage that maybe you would have liked to helped them or rage that they left you... it is very tough. I am very grateful that you wrote sharing a bit of your story. I also lost my two best friends at age 19 but to a car accident. It has been by far the most depressing moment in my life and has taken me years to recover but one thing that I can say about the accident that I sadly cannot say about other painful events in my life is that I did not repress it, I cried for them A LOT, I felt sad for almost a whole year or more, I never, not once hid my emotions in any way... I might still have rage against them due to the fact that I feel like they left me all alone but deep down its just sadness over missing them.

I hope you are able to continue the process, keep working on it, feel it, let it go and do keep me posted with your progress. So far I am on day 20 and already I feel like I have uncovered some shameful and anger filled moments of my life that I had tucked away... one day at a time. Have faith and best of luck.