Shame

[Caressa2]

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Shame is a learned response. There is a lot of interest in shame these days in relation to addiction and recovery from addiction. When we start feeling shameful, we leave ourselves and operate much like someone on drugs or alcohol. Nothing clear can get in. Nothing clear can come out.

It is important to remember that shame is learned and that anything that is learned can be unlearned. Shame was used to control us when we were younger, and now we often use it to control others. When we start feeling ashamed, no new information can come in, we canot process information clearly, and we cannot communicate clearly. We are in our addictive disease.

Ir is important to see the role shame has played in our lives. It is also important not to stay stuck in it.

[MrDuck]

Shame can be a real set back in the life of any alcoholic. I think probably 100% of alcoholics have to deal with it. The hard part about dealing with it is that it is one of the things that most do not want to talk about. But to me it is like anything else I have learned in recovery that unless it is shared with someone or others openly it never goes away. What helped me in the beginning was going to meetings and listening to others share their feelings and thoughts about it and that opened up the door for it to be alright for me to do the same. But shame is like the rest of the stuff. Wasn't something that I worked on one time and it went away. Wasn't something that just knowledge took it away for ever. Every one in a blue moon if I am caught at the right time somewhat unexpectenly I can take shame on in a heartbeat and wonder who in the hell did that happen. Doesn't stay long though. One thing I have also learned to keep my self out of situation that I should be shameful for.

Have a great holiday and keep smiling.

Ron

[Caressa2]

Thank you for sharing Ron. I found that if I took the thought of me acting out in my disease out of the shame, then there was nothing left. It wasn't the real me, it was my disease that was talking.

As you say though, I had to share it talk about it, and separate the reality and the real me, from the misperception of my disease and the old tapes of yesterday. As I shared with a friend in a meeting once, of up take the real "me" out of the equation, there isn't much left to the equation. The same held true for blame.

It doesn't mean I can have to condone the acts, I am responsible for them; but I do need to forgive the person, because it was the disease talking, the old tapes running, and me trying to live up to them, and never feeling like I quite measured up.

Yet as they say, if we didn't have the remorse and guilt we wouldn't be alcoholics or addicts. It is a symptom of our dis-ease!