I’ve described shame in many ways over the past few years--dark, insidious, infiltrating, corrupt, deceptive, binding, etc. But in the past few months, my work has cornered me into adding another adjective to the list--grounding.
Juxtaposing these two words I’ve held as antithetical for so long has created quite the dilemma.
The seed was first planted during one of my own therapy appointments two years ago. As I processed a scene from when I was seven years old, I was astounded to discover that in the aftermath of hurt my internally, berating dialogue had actually anchored me. Holed up in a bathroom where I felt safe to cry, the “talking to” I gave myself before exiting seemed to strengthen me in the difficult task of returning to my family.
For days after the session, I was perplexed:
“That was strange. It felt like I honored shame. Surely that’s not right--I must be misunderstanding what happened.”
Fast forward to this past December as I read in a story group another scene from first grade. Everyone helped me hear my harshness towards myself as a coping mechanism. My writing ended with these words:
Earlier. That’s what I should have done. I should have thought of my idea earlier. I should have guessed he’d come home. Instead of mindlessly wasting the day away, why didn’t I make a plan for tonight? Even if I was wrong, I could have been at my grandmother’s. I should have thought of that. I shouldn’t have waited so long. I should have realized the afternoon was almost over and it’d be too late. Earlier. I need to think about things earlier.
Until a few weeks ago, I continued to think this was something only I did. Another story group member, sharing a very different story, also ended with a similar internal dialogue. Outside of my own mind and voice, I could finally hear the litany of “should”s as a way of grappling with unpredictable and unpreventable pain.
As I’ve held the words shame and grounding together, I’ve begun to think of it like this…
In the presence of harm, the experience of powerlessness feels untethered. Like in every space movie that I’ve seen (Ad Astra, Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian) an unforeseen explosion catapults us away from the only vessel with engine thrusters powerful enough to break the orbit of an uninhabitable planet. We watch in horror as the chord of our life suit detaches from our spacecraft and we drift into oblivion.
It is in this type of nightmare that shame grounds us. It’s not a kind ground on which to stand—it’s more like wet cement that entraps you as it congeals—but it does provide temporary relief from the disorientation of spinning away from those to whom we are meant to belong.
I believe any measure of relief in an experience of trauma is a form of mercy, and whether it’s in my story or in someone else’s, if shame provides a sliver of relief then I need to honor the way it anchors survival before asking it to step aside.
What internal speech do you most often give yourself? When was that recording first dubbed? What story of historic inner harshness do you need to tell in order to reframe it as how you grounded yourself to survive powerlessness?