Someone told me about how stressed she was at work. There
was a lot of work to be done and she was worried she would be judged for not
completing her work on time though she had no real deadlines.
"Then why are you stressing out over work?" I
wondered.
"I'm too hard on myself. I'm a perfectionist."
"So you won't be judged?
That you won't be seen as not pulling your weight."
"Right. I'm always fighting against that feeling of impending criticism."
It's a conversation we have had before in some variation or
another. Behind her was a critical mother who demanded compliance and agreement
with all she did and said. If my friend
disagreed or did something her mother did not approve of, she would be criticized for being deficient. Since early childhood.
When you are on the receiving end of criticism, day in and
day out, you aquire a belief that you are not good enough and that to receive love and support you need to "do something acceptable." In other words, receiving love is linked with duty of some kind and the seeds of codependency are now sown. But the feeling that lurks below, that motivates much later behavior, is shame.
The closest thing we have as adults that approximately captures that feeling is one of embarrassment. Imagine you are talking in
front of a group of people and your pants fall down. At that moment two things happen quickly: a) you are exposed and seen by others and b) those others, by
their laughing, are judging you as deficient. This is usually the primary reason why many people are terrified of speaking in front of others--fear of being humiliated. When we feel humiliated we feel ashamed, as if our very existence is judged unworthy.
So you can imagine growing up day in and day out being seen
in the eyes of a parent and then being judged as deficient or worthless for
what we did or didn't do right or, worse yet, just for existing. Each time that moment happens is the moment
where shame floods our bodies. A
deflated sense of self creeps in that then hums quietly away in the background
of the mind while the rest of life is spent doing better, being perfect,
overcompensating to keep that deflated sense tucked away somewhere hoping it
will either just go away or just not be felt, as if it weren't there, or
medicated into numbness.
"Do you really believe that you are worth less as a
person? That there is nothing of value to you?"
"I know that is not true," she said. "But I
just don't feel that way. I really feel not good enough."
And so the trap shut tight and she saw no way out. Like a
hamster in a wheel she kept running from herself because she confused feeling
with reality.
We live in a self indulgent culture. Ever since the
sixties, personal feeling has been celebrated as the ultimate index of personal
value and worth. "Follow your bliss." "Trust your
instincts." "Stay true to your heart." These are the ideals that
organize our progress towards happiness and prosperity.
But this also has a shadow side because feeling and reality
have collapsed into one and the same thing when, in fact, they are two separate
things. A feeling is real. It has a visceral, measureable energetic quality to
it. We experience it in our heart and respiratory rates, in our belly area as
soothing, joyful or fearful and dreadful.
But our ideas and interpretations of what something means
are intellectual concepts that we superimpose on feeling to create meaning and
a story line of how we fit into the world. Repeated "put downs" by
critical others evokes a feeling of defeat and then thoughts show up that
perhaps "something is wrong with me."
After many years pass, both become "programmed"
into our psychology and we come to believe and live as if it remains true that
we are worth less, despite whatever achievements and positive feedback to the
contrary we have gotten from others.
It persists because feeling is given more priority as
"real" than what we think because we have inherited the "stay
true to yourself" messages of previous generations. No one doubts their
feeling of low self worth because it just feels true to feel that way. To think
otherwise feels counterintuitive and becomes one of the more critical areas of
discussion in psychotherapy. Upending the table, unhinging what has appeared to
be true all these years is the goal of a lot of treatment.
I should say too that the opposite is also true. While some
may have a "one down" feeling, others may have a "one up"
feeling. I call it the peacock effect. In this situation, the person feels they
are "more or better" than others by virtue of their status,
intelligence, money, physical looks or talent. But they are another story.
