It is #timetotalk about shame
Shame has a lot to answer for.
Shame encourages me to spend far too much time apologising for the choices I make in my life, even though I really don’t need to be sorry for them.
Shame sits on my shoulder asking me what would so-and-so think about this? And what about that?
Shame asks me to justify my actions and decisions against the expectations of others, regardless of whether those expectations fit with my life.
Shame really likes to put me under a ton of pressure. Shame makes me doubt myself.
Shame is constantly trying to remind me that I am not okay. That I need to be better. That I need to make sure that everyone knows that I am fully aware I need to be better.
Shame doesn’t cooperate with my efforts to look after my mental health. In fact shame is always looking for ways to sabotage it.
Shame tells me that it’s probably best to keep quiet. Not to rock the boat. It suggests that however bad I’m feeling, talking about it would only make it worse.
For a long time I let shame get away with all of this.
After all I believe that shame does all this while thinking that it has my best interests at heart. I don’t believe shame is deliberately trying to make me feel crap. I believe that shame thinks it is trying to help me make my life better. It is just doing a really really awful job of it.
Shame is great at giving really bad opinions and advice.
As well meaning as shame might be, for the sake of my mental health, I have to stand up to it. I have to be strong. I have to let it know that it is not welcome.
But I don’t have to do it alone.
This time last year shame was having a riot in my head. I was a fairly new mum. And a new mum who was having a really tough time with breastfeeding.
Shame was loving it.
Shame kept reminding me how important breastfeeding was. That it was more important than anything else in the whole world. It was the most important measure of whether I was a good mum or not. And as my baby was failing to gain weight fast enough, quite clearly I was a crap mum. But giving up was not an option. Because then I would be a total failure.
Any sense of perspective I might have had about the situation in normal circumstances had been swallowed into a big black hole of shame.
On occasion I’d think that maybe the best thing was to stop. But as soon as I thought about having that conversation with anyone else, shame would tell me that I would feel a much bigger failure if I openly admitted defeat. That I should just keep quiet and struggle on.
Until my sister stepped in, and told me to stop. For my own mental health. And for my baby too.
And when I decided to stop I started talking. But it wasn’t easy. It was bloody scary.
I was convinced that people would question my decision. That they would tell me I was wrong. That they would urge me to keep going.
I was exhausted. I didn’t have the energy to deal with that. I desperately wanted to keep quiet.
But somehow I found the courage to talk. The courage to tell the people closest to me about my decision.
And their response was filled with love.
They made it better. They told me how amazing I was for keeping breastfeeding so long when it had been so tough. They told me that they completely understood my decision. That it was totally okay. They reminded me that although my baby girl wasn’t gaining weight as fast as she “should” be, she was gaining weight. She was growing because of me. She was happy and healthy because of me. They reassured me that I was making the right choice for us, and they made me feel completely and utterly supported in it.
And what I didn’t realise until a long while later was that in the moments I was talking, shame was retreating. Shame was gradually getting pushed out of the picture. The more I talked, the less of a grip shame had on me.
Shame did a very good job of keeping me quiet. I am so grateful to those who stopped it from silencing me completely.
If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive. Brené Brown
We all know there are a bzillion things we could be doing “better” in our lives. But it’s totally okay if not doing them is the best thing for us right now. It is okay to have other priorities. To make other choices.
We can keep shame at bay by knowing it is okay to be who we are. And to be where we are right now, even if that isn’t where we hoped we’d be.
We can tell shame to sod off by trusting ourselves to know our own priorities. Refusing to let it make us feel like we need to explain or defend our choices. We can be unapologetic in our decisions, even when we choose to take the easy option in one area of our lives, because something else is much more important.
We can refuse to let shame through the door when we trust that we are doing our best.
It is totally okay for everyone to have different priorities, make different choices and do things in different ways. We don’t ever see the full picture of anyone else’s life, and they don’t see the full picture of ours. We can know we are doing the best with what we have right now.
And we can always make shame vanish into thin air when we talk.
This #timetotalk day I pledge that I will find the courage to talk when I realise that shame has sneaked in the back door and started to make itself at home. Shame can make itself seem big and scary, but I know all it takes is a hint of love and a nice big hug to send it running in the opposite direction.
I hope you find the courage and #timetotalk too x
This post is part of Time to Talk Day 2017. “Conversations change lives. This Time to Talk Day, we want to get the nation talking about mental health and keep the conversation going round the clock.” Find out more and log your conversation at http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/timetotalkday
