Tag: shame

Ghosting ~ a Reflection

It feels like butterflies, but it’s in a different area of your abdomen. Lower down, shame tickles you as you are about to cross your own boundaries again and make a fool of yourself. It feels obvious that the decision you are about to make does not hold your best interest at heart, but alas you say this will be the last time. And so you send that text asking for clarity from a person who obviously does not care about you. 

You have already been ghosted days ago, and you have seen him on social media practically every time you go on. Obviously this person does not want to interact with you, and you should just use your energy to focus on yourself. Yet, instead, you decide to feed this person’s ego by sending another DM. 

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

It’s like, your intuition has already got you convinced that he is not going to respond, but you want to challenge yourself – just in case. It’s kind of like a drug to go against the known in hopes of a different kind of high. 

Being ignored is a difficult job to handle. You want to quit after a few hours and move on to something better. It’s the hardest thing to see the bigger picture sometimes. The next time the shame starts teasing you, close your eyes and zoom out into the vast landscape around you. The person who decided to try to reduce your value will start to get smaller and smaller, until finally you will see how insignificant their actions are. 

Blessing in Disguise

When we get triggered, the first emotion that usually comes up to the surface feels like anger. I heard someone say recently that anger usually comes up, because anger is the easiest emotion to feel. It sounds like a more valid feeling, than sadness that is sometimes frowned upon. No pun intended, well maybe. Today, I got unexpectedly triggered during a conversation with my mother.


Photo by F on Unsplash

Intense anger pulsated through my body, and my first instinct was to try to deflect it by reading or going for a walk, but I decided to do a little scavenger hunt instead. I lay on my bed and wondered how I can dive deeper into the anger to uncover what was the actual emotion behind the trigger.

The anger kept growing and growing like a balloon being inflated, and it was like I disappeared for a moment.

Suddenly I saw the number “2” written on a small piece of paper. When the picture became clearer, I realized it was my grade book from grammar school. In Poland, “2” was the equivalent of an “F”. I realized that the feeling hiding behind the anger was linked to my attachment to this story. It is a story of ashamed little girl that was supposed to flunk three or four years in a row, but somehow managed to move up to the next grade thanks to her highly influential parents.

The other kids in her class knew that she was supposed to stay back for another year and were always surprised to see her get promoted along with them. The little girl felt very ashamed that she could not please her classmates, teachers, or her parents. She felt so ashamed that she carried unknowingly carried this feeling all her life.

I lay the bed and the anger started wrapping all around my intestines, hugging my stomach, liver, and spleen. I watched the story unfold in my mind, and the images transmuted the feeling into its rightful owner: shame. I took deep breaths hitting my stomach, then my heart with oxygen at fast speed, and I started coughing, coughing up the shame.

I said, “I release this shame.” I kept repeating this, and the pressure released a little with each time.

I imagined myself first erasing the grades on that report card and later deleting the story. The shame we carry is a silent shame, but it attaches itself to everything. We could sit there and feel ashamed of our own thoughts that no one else can even hear. It just sneaks in, sabotaging moments in life where you just want to be spontaneous and free. It is so hard to catch when it’s so often in disguise, and so sometimes I am grateful for these triggers, even though they may ruin a perfectly good Friday night.