Trigger warning: Domestic violence
Have you ever realized that as children how open we were to jump into things without giving a second thought? How uninhibited we used to be while laughing out loud at a joke, jumping into a puddle, fighting upfront, crying in front of everyone, and saying sorry as quickly as possible to amend our relationships. We were so real!
But then growing up we were introduced to one of the most nasty and uncomfortable feelings of all, and that’s shame. While our parents or teachers very unsparingly used this word singing ‘shame, shame puppy shame,’ which everyone else chorused in a group if we did something wrong, every time without our knowledge it dwelled deeper and deeper in our subconscious mind in devastating ways.
Of late, while working on my emotional health with my therapist, Srajan, I was surprised to know how many people keep operating for years from a memory that triggered shame in them which affected them so badly that they could never overcome it. He told me how shame can hamper our body image, deteriorate our self-esteem, and generate feelings of guilt without even indulging in something wrong. How it makes us vulnerable to people who exploit and gaslight us using this weapon which someone incorporated against us to tame us down.
And I am sure that each one of us must have a story of growing up with shame. Even narcissists who look perfect and unbreakable from the outside, actually operate from their deeper sense of shame and it is their deep-rooted feeling of shame that they try to overcome by shaming and bringing down others.
In one of the theatre sessions that I attended recently, while performing an activity, I realized how most of us are ruled by the deeply uncomfortable feeling of shame. As a theatre artist, we have to deal a lot with inhibitions both at physical and mental levels. While we have to work on our bodies to make them more flexible so that we meet our theatrical performance requirements, tackling mental and emotional inhibitions feels even more difficult.
In this activity, our trainer, Badri, asked us to sit in a circle, as usually happens in theatre. Then each one of us was asked to make use of the central space making a sound or an action that conveys the meaning of ‘no’. The idea was to be as free and spontaneous as possible. That turned out to be one of the most challenging activities of the entire session for most of us as we all could sense the discomforting feeling of inhibition creeping inside ourselves.
While one of the participants, Ashish, said I am unable to think of a sound that conveys no meaning, another participant, Debolina, shared how as a woman it is more inhibiting to do something like this, as since our childhood, we women are taught to be modest, refined and maintain a low volume. It was only after jumping into that space without giving a second thought of what we would do, as Badri had guided us, that we could overcome our shame and even enjoy the process like anything.
My story is not different. Growing up I was a lot open, talkative, and an extroverted kid who used to enjoy people and doing crazy stuff in front of everyone. I was constantly fed by some relatives, neighbors, and at times by my parents about how silly I looked while being myself, singing and dancing without any inhibitions. Some elder ladies in the family also taught me how shame is an ornament of a woman.
At 27, while I was going through a divorce, I was told it was because of my upfront attitude that my ex-husband used to beat me and my mother-in-law used to hate me. For almost a decade, I somehow blamed myself for my divorce despite knowing that my ex-husband was abusive even when I was pregnant and for my inability to protect my child as he was stillborn. It was when I took therapy and understood that probably both my ex-husband and the mother-in-law shared some traits of narcissist personality disorder that I could get some closure and get out of the self-blame game and shame.
I would like to share a similar story from a beautiful Hindi movie that I watched recently on Netflix, Kho Gaye Hum Kahan. The story revolves around the lives of three best friends in their 20s dealing with their own battles further exemplified by their over-dependence on social media to seek self-validation. In the movie, one of the lead characters Imaad, a stand-up comedian finally opens up his secret in front of his audience about his trauma of having suffered prolonged sexual abuse at the hands of his father’s business partner and friend when he was a 10-year-old kid.
Siddhant Chaturvedi as Imad in Kho Gaye Hum Kahan.
He finally liberates himself by speaking up with these final words, ‘For the past 15 years I had only one aim, that no one should know my truth. No one should see it. I snuck my way through life till here. To avoid the truth. I never even told my friend about it. I thought it was my fault. That night what could a ten-year-old have done? He could’ve shouted. Tried to stop it, could’ve run away. And since that day, all I‘ve done is run. But not anymore. I have spent fifteen years of my life with this shame. I’m done. Tonight, I’m taking control of my life back in my hands.’
I hope like Imaad we all also could gather some courage to speak about our own stories of shame and liberate ourselves from its clutches forever.
I have done so by finding a way of expressing myself through art and writing poems, stories, and blogs. As a creative artist, writing and theatre have helped me a lot to cope with the awfulness of shame and get myself out of its byproducts which are often feelings of ‘self-loathing’ and ‘inhibition’. My journey has been liberating and beautiful so far. I hope you too find your way to come out of it and speak about it as the more we speak about shame, the easier it becomes to get over it.