When Logic Fails ? On Shame ? kyllingsara

My mind is of several minds. While one part can hold one thing true, another part can have a complete opposite take on the same topic. I wrote a little about it in a previous post, where I address the impossible challenge of being split into two completely separate parts when it comes to logic and feelings. It?s one of the most difficult and frustrating aspects of my psychological make-up ? the way?I can intellectually know something, and also believe it, but?am incapable of?relating it to myself. For example, I know that sexual abuse is not the fault of the victim. I know that the victim will often blame themselves for abuse, but that it?s not their fault and healing comes through letting go of that blame. My mind can completely grasp this concept. I can, with great feeling and passion, share this information with others. And I would?challenge anyone?who as much as thinks for a fraction of a second, that?child abuse is the child?s fault ? and I wouldn?t?hesitate to publicly shame them for thinking so.?But you know what comes next, don?t you ? I am filled with an overwhelming and oppressive shame. I think everything is my fault. I know it?s not my fault, but it feels, without exception, all the time, that I am not only at fault, I?am faulty.

Imagine watching TV and the channels keep changing. If your spouse is a channel surfer, you know what I mean. This is my mind. The channels keep changing and this makes identifying what happened to me incredibly difficult. I can slow the channel changing down a little sometimes, and I can write or speak about what happened, but the act of writing or speaking is detached from what is happening in my mind. My mind won?t hold that channel, so I have great difficulty identifying the solid, realistic events of my past. I often wonder if what I know happened, really happened. I wonder if the brief views of my past are real, or if they are fabrications created by my mind to justify the intense and horrible reality of my emotional state. In truth, I wish everything was a fabrication. I wish with all my being that my childhood was just a bad dream. A nightmare I will soon wake up from.

During my stay at?the hospital that had a special program for treating dissociative disorders, I wrote myself a brief letter in the journal the therapist made me keep. I wrote the letter when I remembered. In the letter I wrote down what happened, for the first time, and said something like ?I know this is true.? I was afraid the hospital staff would try to mess with my memories and I would come out with some crazy story of horrific abuse that wasn?t true but that I believed nonetheless. I wanted proof for myself that what I knew, I knew. So I know. But I am my worst critic, and I?m harsh in my self-judgment, so I tell myself that it doesn?t seem all that bad. It seems like I should just be able to accept that it happened and move on. But the reality is that it profoundly affects me. The worst way that I am affected, I think, is that I feel incredible shame for what happened and have spent my entire life re-enacting in some way the role I played then, compounding the shame and solidifying the belief that I asked for it, I liked it, I participated willingly in it, and that makes me a monster. Additionally, I think I created the sexual component of the behaviors. What was done to me was meant to be loving, nurturing, and normal and I am the monster that made it something sexual. I cannot escape this belief. And since I was a child, the shame is exponential as a sexual child is most certainly a monster.

Even writing it down and re-reading it, I can?t find the faulty logic. Children are not responsible for the abuse perpetuated upon them, but my experiences weren?t abusive ? not in the beginning, I made them sexual so I?m the one to blame. Certainly, in the manner of a true dissociative mind, I can step back and ask the logical one inside to make a comment on this: ?The behaviors were sexual in nature, and since you were a child you were not to blame. The perpetrator was abusive. The perpetrator was meeting his sexual/emotional needs through you.? Immediately my mind spins, my stomach develops that bottomless pit of sickness, my skin crawls, and I want to scream and hit myself. It?s easier to blame myself. It?s relaxing and calming to imagine punishing myself. It?s normal and comfortable and safe to blame myself. The awful, threatening, deeply disturbing pit in my stomach disappears as I reject the logic of ?he was at fault? and embrace the belief that ?I am faulty.?

I also know that there is more to this story. It?s not just about the confusing her-me relationship (the relationship between me and the alters). It?s about someone else, because I can smell him. I can see and I can feel, before the channel changes, brief scenes. Scenes that set the stage for everything else. I once said to my therapist, ?I know for a fact that this happened, and also I know for a fact it did not.? It seems easier to believe that it didn?t happen, and at times I feel intense anger towards the parts of me that kept my childhood hidden from me for so long. I feel anger because I never wanted to know. I feel anger because I don?t know what to do with all of this. If only I could unlock that part of my mind, and see what happened, and know that it wasn?t my fault ? then I could transfer that to the here and now. Change the channel.

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