There is nothing more devastating than having a disease that everyone around you blames you for.
Individuals who are innately predisposed to introversion tend to defend against shame by internal withdrawal. Relationships are either avoided or abandoned, and the individual may display an oscillating in- and- out pattern with regard to relationships. When an introvert is forced to contend with excessive shame, the typical response is to hide deeper inside. While some innate introverts develop “learned extroversion” in response to shame, usually the self becomes more hidden, shut in, further isolated, increasingly detached from others.
+ shame + introversion + depression + guilt + shame bound + withdrawal + relationships + self + hidden + retreat + isolated + hide + detatched
Guilt usually has a cause—effect pattern of beginning, middle and end, whereas shame is all—pervasive, leaving no recourse for action. When we feel ashamed of ourselves, we want to hide from the world. We even want to hide from ourselves because the self rejection is so painful. No amount of reassurance from the outside will change the internal experience of unworthiness. Shame clings like sticky sap on a tree.
+ guilt + shame + pervasive + terminal + action + end + rejection + self-worth + unworthy + clings + reassurance + anxiety + depression + eating disorders + cause + effect + ashamed + hide
People become addicts in the process of trying to feel whole instead of fragmented, connected to something instead of lost and alienated. They try to calm the torment of shame and anxiety and fill the void of inner emptiness.
+ addiction + shame + eating disorder + binge + purge + bulimia + addicts + fragmented + fill + emptiness + calm + anxiety + void + vacant + connected + relationship
And if all that is meaningless, I want to be cured
Of a craving for something I cannot find
And of the shame of never finding it.
+ T.S. Elliot + meaning + meaningless + cured + fulfilling + craving + empty + yearning + longing + find + shame + looking + search + fill + complete + embarrassment + life
July 24th
+ bulimia + eating disorder + depression + grief + birthday + dad + shame
Her emotional pain confirms her belief that she is bad and weak. If she feels lonely,her loneliness confirms that she is unworthy of company. If she feels sad, her sadness proves what a pathetic creature she is. Because painful feelings accentuate her core sense of defectiveness and shame, and because she does not know how to tolerate her psychic pain or to seek effective and nondestructive relief from it, she feels unable to bear the disappointments, hurts, rejections, injustices, frustrations, losses, and limitations that are inevitably part of human life.
By looking to food rather than people to meet self-object needs, the eating disordered individual tried to circumvent the need for human self- object responsiveness and to avoid further disappointment and shame. Food is seen as trustworthy, while people are not.
+ bulimia + external + empty + internal + needs + food + void + people + shame + trust + disappointment + relationships
A bulimic person’s shame may lead her to try not only to hide her eating- disordered behaviors but also her basic needs and yearnings. She may wish that her needs and desires did not exist and may try to act as if she does not need or want anyone or anything. when that attempt inevitably fails, she may wish others could magically read her mind and respond to her needs and wants without having to ask for anything. To avoid shame of expressing her needs and desires, she turns to food rather than relationships, for comfort. Instant gratification, that you can’t find in other places.
+ sensing the self + bulimia + needs + yearnings + shame + eating disorder + hide + need + want + desires + food + relationships + avoid + expressing
