Shame Memories

Bennie: “Shame memories…raking over…and leaving gashes.”
Sasha: “Not bad. They’re titles, right?”
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Elvis Presley was my uncle.

For a good length of time in 1974, Elvis Presley was the best part of my family.  My depiction of my relationship to him knew no bounds.  My kindergarten teachers and aides were convinced, so passionate and detailed my telling of our relationship.  Now, since he had no siblings, I am not sure if they thought he was an honorary part of my family or an in-law, but when my mother went to the parent-teacher conference, all they wanted to talk about was Elvis and not my progress in finger painting.

The repercussions from my story are still hard to describe.  While the physical consequences of my actions dissipated eventually, I had brought shame onto my family by lying and I was reminded about this often over the subsequent weeks.  Now since the reality of my family life would probably have been harder to believe than Elvis being my uncle (it was 1974, not 2004 after all), I learned very quickly to be quiet.  You want to know about my family? Tell me about yours first.  You want to play at my house?  Your house is so much more fun.

To compound the shame, this story was shared with all the members of my extended family to much laughter and teasing.  I now realize that the mixture of the private messages of shame and the public message of ridicule confused five-year old Jenny.  The messages that I recorded were a) I was not safe in a group setting and b) the best way of handling that fear would be to blend in and not stand out.  If I was going to stand out, it would be extremely unsafe for me to do so.  I gave up many opportunities because it felt unsafe to be in front of a group, although I was not conscious of it at the time.

Because of a few choices I made recently, being in front of a group has been something I have been blessed to experience over the last six months.  Now, when assignments have come up that required me to be front and center either by the task itself or the feedback that the others are required to give, there have been times I railed against those decisions I’ve made.  “What the hell were you thinking?” was a common refrain.

However, much more visceral were the feelings I felt in my body.  The tightness in my chest and back was the indicators that I was in full fight or fight syndrome.  With mind-body tools learned from Abigail Steidley, I was able to isolate the feelings of tension and resistance in my body.

At the same time, by writing two pages a day in a stream of consciousness form, I was able to ascertain the thoughts that were creating many of those feelings in my body.  The themes of safety and being under attack were common themes.  By using various methods of thought inquiry, I was able to determine that the attacks were not coming from external sources but from me.

While all the above is going on, my Uncle Elvis memory started popping up frequently.  In A Visit from the Goon Squad, Bennie starts writing down different shame memories as he relays them in the story.  He writes them down in very short sentences and phrases on a back of the ticket.  When Sasha, his assistant, picks up the paper while they are driving back into the city, she doesn’t know the meanings that Bennie has attached to them.  “They’re titles, right?”

Because there are no accidents in the world, I believe that I was meant to read that book exactly while I was uncovering my thoughts and feelings about shame and others’ opinions of me.  I now have the capacity to provide safety for myself and the discernment to decide what fits for me and what doesn’t.  I can now receive people’s reactions to me as learning opportunities and not the shame-filled experiences of the past.

When you are triggered by present day experiences into your own shame memories, remember that you have the capacity to choose what you believe today.  Whether you feel tightness in your body or lightness, it is your body letting you know what meaning you are attaching to an experience.  If you continue to have the feeling in your body, it might be a message that there is some reconciliation with your past self that needs to be completed or that God is calling you in a different direction.

For this particular shame memory, I used a combination of Christina Merkley’s Orphan Rescue and Abigail Steidley’s mind/body tools to reconcile with five-year old Jenny.  She is with me now, in the comfort of my soul, and I love her dearly.  She is the best gift I’ve given to myself recently.

Uncle Elvis gives us the giggles now.

Tagged as: awareness, mind-body, shame, The Work, thought work, trauma, Your Pain is a Gift