Hi ninibee,

I’m sorry that rereading that thread upset you. With regard to the situation with the guy who blocked you on FB, I hope you can let that go. We’ve all done things we wish we could undo. It’s part of being human. If I were to think of all the times I’ve messed up, it’d be too much for me, would ruin my day for sure, so I choose to forgive myself. I say to myself I’m a human and humans make mistakes.

There is one bit of info within that earlier thread that I find especially interesting. It was when you told TB member Inky that you’ve always thought it’s possible that you are on the Asperger’s spectrum and that you’ve never spoken about it to anyone. Is this something you would want to know? Being on the spectrum would explain your difficulties with social interactions. What do you think?

B

Dear ninibee:

The two topics, shame and passion are connected- shame does keep passion down, or kills it quickly if and when it awakens.

Like you, I also did a lot of things that were shameful. It is not that I determined that those shameful acts were not my actions, or that I was not responsible for them.

Thing is, my mother introduced shame into me before I did those shameful acts, when I was, like I wrote earlier,  “100% innocent and loving and eager to please her”. In other words, in the process of healing, I went back in time, all the way back to the time I was a young child, remembering how she shamed me when there was nothing to shame!

* If you can’t go back in time this way, think about what you do remember your mother shaming you for: were you responsible for what she shamed you for, was any of it your fault? If not, then your mother is not beyond shaming you as a young child for what you were not responsible for.

Back to me, that early, undeserved shame hurt terribly, a shock to the system, really. From then on, with repeated messages of shame, I was mentally unwell, confused, desperate, in pain, and therefore likely to act in shameful ways. And I did.

By going back in time to the time before I did anything shameful, I gave myself the stamp “innocent”, or “okay”, and then, later I forgave myself for the shameful acts I did and for hurting other people. It was difficult, but I finally did it: I forgave myself because of the hard work I’ve been doing healing, starting in 2011.  The difficult and long work on healing myself is what earned me self-forgiveness.

Plus, when there is nothing you can do to correct past actions, feeling shame and guilty is not useful, it doesn’t do anything that’s good for anyone.

“I do wonder if our situations are different, because I think I have done a lot to be ashamed of. Maybe there have been some times that people shamed me for things that I did not deserve to be shamed for, but I do see those times as clearly as I have seen the shameful I have done”-

– so far then, our situations are not different: (1) as an older child, through adolescence and adulthood, I did lots of shameful things,  and (2) there were plenty of people who shamed me for what I was not responsible for (people who were mean, people who selfishly took advantage of the fact that I was mentally/ emotionally unwell).

“is there something to you that indicates that I was shamed or given shame in a similar way to you?”-

Yes, let’s take just one of your posts, on Nov 2, 2019, you wrote: “From a young age, I can remember hating my mother”- no child hates her mother at a young age unless her mother terribly hurt her many times earlier, which means, at a very early age.

No child is shameful and guilty at a very young age. (I too hated my mother, very intensely, for many years. It was difficult to live with all that anger on top of the shame and guilt).

“As a child, I often wished my parents would divorce and that my dad would re-marry someone else. I do not know what this really says about her, though. This is still about me”- it says that she was a bad mother to a good child. (I too wished to have had a different mother).

“I tried to talk to her in various conversations to tell her how I felt. I tried to explain.. I would tell her that I felt hurt by her. Her response to this was always something like ‘I hurt you? You hurt me!”-

– this is you as an older child or a teenager, trying to connect with your mother, trying to heal the relationship with her, and her reaction: NO! Before that age, as a young child (not with elaborate words and thoughts, but in simpler ways) you tried to connect with her many, many times, you tried hard to make her love you, and you failed- not because there was something wrong with you, but because there was something wrong with her.

Look at her reaction: “I hurt you? You hurt me!”- what kind of a reaction is that? Is this a reaction of a loving mother who has any concern for her daughter’s well-being? Or is it a reaction of an immature girl-mother talking to her daughter as if both were immature teenagers, saying: I didn’t do it! You did!

Talking about shame- her reaction was shameful!

Overall, your mother is extremely self-centered, shaming and guilt-tripping, so what I know about her tells me a lot about who you are: that at an early age, before you did anything shameful, you were already her victim, terribly hurt through no fault of your own.

anita

Hi ninibee,

Your perspective on the possibility of being on the spectrum makes a lot sense to me. I guess another benefit of having a diagnosis (in addition to what you’ve listed) would be that you could then get communication and social skills therapy designed specifically for Asperger’s individuals…but you could get similar therapy without a diagnosis too, I suppose. Anyway, I get what you’re saying. You make a lot of sense to me.

I’m so impressed with you, ninibee. As I’ve posted before on these forums, the people I admire most are those who, in the midst of difficult challenges, keep searching for the right paths to take, and that is you.

Yesterday Anita posted to you:

Your intelligence and perseverance on your various threads is evidence, in my mind, that you can do a lot of healing and that if you persist, by the time you are in your mid-twenties, you will be in a much, much better place, having your own space, a healthier mental space as well as practically, your own home.

and

I think it’s time to enroll in college, choose a subject matter that feels most interesting, something most likely to trigger some passion in you, and enroll, I say!

…both excellent, I say!

B

Dear ninibee,

Sometimes I feel like my mind goes blank and I cannot see or remember anything wrong with my mom

a part of the problem could be that the wound happen very early in your childhood. I’ve looked at your previous threads and saw that you mentioned your mom had germophobia, and also that you have a phobia of vomiting which might be related to an incident on an airplane when you were left unchanged in your own vomit. You also mentioned that later you didn’t like when your mother was going through your dirty laundry and that you preferred to wash your clothes by yourself.

All that indicates to me that your mother might have been disgusted with your bodily secretions and was very uncomfortable changing your diapers, cleaning you from vomit etc, specially since she’s so afraid of germs. So her disgust and maybe even fear of your bodily secretions have probably registered in you, and you now feel disgusting and unacceptable to yourself. The rejection happened so early, that it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly it is.

It has nothing to do with you – you were a normal baby pooing and puking like every other baby – it has to do with your mother’s inability to accept you on the bodily level, thus creating a feeling in you of being rejected for who you are.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Tee.

Dear ninibee:

I will probably have a few more thoughts about what you shared tomorrow morning (in about 13 hours from now), but for now: I appreciate you answering my questions so clearly and respectfully. From what I understand, at the time (2019) you wished that you had a mother whom you liked and respected, and therefore wanting to make her proud. But because you disliked and disrespected your mother, you had no one that you wanted to please and make proud. Maybe that’s the emptiness you talked about at the time, not having anyone to live for, is how you put it, if I remember correctly.

Is that it?

anita