TW: mentions of human trafficking, incest, an*l r*pe

Ever since we started healing in therapy, shame has been a primary focus. In fact I think it must have been three days in that our therapist told us about shame and asked if there was anything we were ashamed of. Shame being sneaky, we told him high and loud that no, we were ashamed of nothing.

After he told us what shame was, it turned out we were in fact ashamed of a heck of a lot of things. Shame was the feeling of being bad. A bad person, not good enough, not enough, unworthy. He asked us to make a list and a list we made. We were ashamed of being stupid, ashamed of not being good enough, ashamed of our father having passed, ashamed of never making our mother proud, ashamed of our weight, ashamed of our shame. The list was endless. We told him rather angrily “ok, we know we’re ashamed, now what?” He explained that shame was an emotion that was usually passed on from people to people. We are not born ashamed, we are made to feel shame by other people. We are born worthy and made to feel unworthy. Unlike other emotions (like joy, anger, fear, sadness), which come from within, shame comes from others looking at you with their value system (and importantly, not yours). The issue is, as a child, you can’t fight back from the shame that adults around you hold. The shame we felt as adults came from situations where someone (usually feeling shame one way or another) shamed us as a kid. So we had to dig deep and find out where and when our shame came from.

From very early on in our therapeutic journey, the focus on shame became a focus on who gave us that vision of ourselves. I think the easiest analysis we had was about being stupid or dumb. It was so obvious that it came from our parents. Both our parents were incredibly smart people, who built their entire value systems  on being smart. Their point of view oscillated between pride and shame. They both became doctors. They both were praised for how well they understood a whole bunch of things. They both had a very high IQ. They made children together they encouraged to learn and develop the same kind of “smart” they valued. They ranked their children in their head by how high their IQ were. The issue was, you see, we (the system) weren’t that smart according to the standards my parents had set for us. We didn’t skip a class. We didn’t need special support to go through school (unlike our “more intelligence siblings”, believe it or not, needing help from our parents was a sign of intelligence). We weren’t interested in learning to read (we recently found out one of our littles just didn’t want my mom to teach us anything because she was mean)and had a very hard time learning things by just reading them. It was much easier to repeat things out loud over and over again (we are still to this day auditory learners). Our mother didn’t see in us the things she praised herself to be and it made her ashamed. The image in the mirror (what she saw of herself when she looked at us) wasn’t pleasing to her eyes and wasn’t validating her self-esteem. So she repeatedly and all over our life made us feel stupid. We felt lame for being stupid. So very very stupid. And there was nothing in the entire world we could do to prove her wrong. Our grades were high, she’d find a way to say it didn’t mean we were smart. She hadn’t done anything to make them high (unlike our siblings who she helped do their homework every night for all their school years). We got into law school, it wasn’t congratulated, it’s just university. Everyone gets in. Alright then this year’s grades will please her? No. They didn’t. Next year maybe? They were even higher, top 15 of the university. She was a little bit surprised and maybe proud but it was still hidden behind the surprise (as if it was surprising all things considered). I will stop here, the list could go on forever. The why we were so ashamed of ourselves for being stupid was very clear. Our therapist explained that shaming can come from the emotional information given by the message, not the message itself. My mother didn’t have to say “you’re stupid” to make me understand that she thought that I was; she could just never downplay any of my wins and exaggerate all of my mistakes. That was information enough. As a side-note, giving unsolicited advice often makes a person feel shame over having to be “told what to do” – the underlying message is that they can’t figure it out themselves (and that’s why it usually doesn’t work).  

The issue is that shame bounces from one person to another. If someone calls me bad/lame and inside my value blueprint, it is something that I previously integrated as a thing that “could be true”, it becomes ten times worst. They “must be right” resonates so very strongly and saying “no” when we’re triggered like that feels almost impossible. There are too many instances of people telling me this that “it simply must be true” and believing otherwise implies telling the shaming person that they’re wrong. That is so hard when that message has been told over and over again for years or in a way that hit very badly. If it’s the person shaming us was someone with authority or someone we trusted, with whom we opened up or felt vulnerable with, it can be even worst. Sometimes, it’s not even voluntary… Before we had any sense of our value, we once had dinner with the boyfriend of a colleague who has the same issues we had (CSA) and he shamed us the entire dinner. It was almost like his shame showed up as soon as we were in the room. We came out of there feeling horrible and neither he nor we had any idea what happened. It was very upsetting. Once we had been in therapy for a few months, with someone for the first time telling us we were worth something, we saw him again and it didn’t happen. His shame was identical but ours had been diminished through healing. It didn’t echo as much in our shame cave. Someone finally consistently believed in us and our value blueprint changed.

So we thought to ourselves, what now? What can we do to really actually believe it?

The answer we found in love-based anger and standing up for what we believed to be right. Shame often feels like home but we found that heading towards shame was harmful and we weren’t alive to feel bad and unworthy so we had to find another way. Our therapist gave us keys such as one sentence we wrote and looked at very often “you are worthy from birth, nothing you do and nothing they made you do or did to you will ever change that”. With that in mind, we went on a treasure hunt to figure out our value system and made everything bounce against that (with the help of our therapist). What do WE think? What is OUR opinion about all of this? Is being smart something that gives more value to someone? No. It’s good, it’s a gift, it’s amazing and it should be celebrated. But being born dumb doesn’t mean you have less value. Human value is human value. From that point on, we refused her words. Every time we felt them creeping in, we yelled back: “these are NOT our values. What you’re saying isn’t true. I love me.” We reclaimed the power of our value blueprint. It’s very hard and we are still working on this every day and with every memory or part that comes in with any shame. The issue with shame was that it creeps up on you: when you’re done saying “NO” to one event where someone shamed you, another one (or another part) comes in to question what you just said and maybe make you re-evaluate your worth. It requires standing tall and grounded in your truth about yourself.

Later in our journey, we learned that shame is also a very social emotion, which means that it tends to control social spaces. By that we mean that shame tries to dictate who shows up and who hides, what is acceptable and unacceptable socially to be said/done. But as a social emotion, it is also linked with values of a group and those values can change. Someone saying something or doing something and the other people’s reactions can change the shame in everyone (in good and bad). Talking about mental health is often one of the best examples. It can feel shameful but when one person is honest and unashamed of their situation, it helps others feel less ashamed and share their burden.

As a social emotion, it can be very complicated to push away elements of shame that are ingrained in society or in a group that you belong/belonged to. It takes time, it takes practice and it also takes understanding the feeling inside ourselves. Sometimes it’s shame but other times, it’s coupled with humiliation, grief, despair, self-hatred, anger. Sometimes it’s doubting what we know as if it were smoke we just can’t remove, which clouds our judgement.

The best example we have of this is prostitution and it’s honestly a work in progress. We were trafficked as teens from age 15 to age 17 and then continued prostitution by ourselves from age 19 to age 21 (we were trafficked again around age 19-20 for a few months). We stopped upon meeting our boyfriend. Some of this shame we have faced, especially the one regarding trafficking. We used to tell that to people all over, at work, to our friends. A lot of the times, it was healthy to talk about it. We met other survivors who helped us see that they, like us, were normal people. We participated in several groups that helped us through this shame enormously. It’s a very social topic though, it is depicted all over the place, from insults to movies going through jokes and how people talk about prostitutes you see in the street and the myth of “sex work”. It is enforced by traffickers, clients and all those who benefit from it. Going against this social image of what prostitution is and what trafficking is was very hard. ur main goal was to say “we are worthy” and so each time something felt like it was affecting our sense of self-worth, it had to be rephrased or reframed. It took us a while to understand that shame was used against us, to shut us up (shame does that) or hide us. The things that are done to prostitutes are so bad that it’s extremely easy to shame us. From dehumanization to shame, it’s a straight road. It takes a lot of courage and a lot of deconstructing societal construct to move away from that shame because once you see it, it’s everywhere, in the words, the jokes, the sexism… It’s easy to get pulled back into previous patterns.

We also found that often times, shame came hand in hand with Stockholm syndrome and desperately needing safety. We constantly tried to be safer by trying to get in on the good sides of our buyers, rapists and traffickers. There was really no other way we could see to stay safe (running away wasn’t an option). Their feeling that we were sub-par and unworthy and less than became our own as we tried to fit into the mold they created for us. Maybe they would love/accept us if we fit in that mold you see? I honestly don’t think these people are capable of love but at the time, it wasn’t very clear. Their manipulation technics were very powerful. It also means that standing up for ourselves means detaching ourselves from them, saying we don’t belong and working through that attachment.

When shame takes over and hiding becomes the main action, healing just isn’t possible for us. I’ll forever remember what our therapist said to us once after we revealed in writing that we had been raped anally by our brother but were way too ashamed of it. He said “well, you have got to find a way to talk about it”. He was right. It stayed with us. Just yesterday he was trying to make us feel calmer and we said to him “I feel like I don’t deserve to feel calm”. Shame was preventing me from allowing myself to feel better. Thankfully shame as it is tends to dissipate and disappear from being talked about with a trustworthy person. Once it is mentioned with honesty and welcomed without additional shame, it is very healing. However, fighting shame is a commitment we have to make to ourselves. As mentioned, it creeps in on us as a kind of “wide road” and “straightforward explanation for the abuse”. “We were bad so it was supposed to happen to us” is a lie that we sometimes needed at the time to survive, but it is not serving us anymore and in fact, it hinders our healing and belongs with denial.

One of the topics we are still trying to figure out is the connection between shame and guilt. Initially, it wasn’t really an issue. Guilt is about having done something wrong. Shame is about being bad because you’ve made a mistake. The two don’t have to go hand in hand. As a legal counsel I review contracts very often. I will sometimes make mistakes. It is something I am guilty of. But it doesn’t affect my self-worth. It doesn’t mean I am lame or bad or stupid or dumb. Far from it. It just means I am human. It happens that I feel them together but as I know a lot on the topic, I work through it inside to figure out what is reasonable and what isn’t.

However, other times I feel like shame should go hand in hand with guilt. For example, it is definitely the case when it comes to my abusers. They are definitely guilty of their crimes and should feel ashamed because of them (but do they?). They were cruel, dangerous, criminal. Those adjectives are, I guess, defined by my value system. They are incredibly bad for having done those things, especially as it was their choice and they show no remorse or lack of intention. They were in no way coerced to do any of it. They often took pleasure in that. When I say shame is a social emotion, I think they validate their actions and their lack of shame by being allowed to do it and by meeting others who do it too (when they aren’t psychopaths). As a group, it is suddenly easier to pay to rape a woman. Where is their humanity in there, I simply do not know. But often times, their shame is lacking too and they defend themselves by saying they’re not the only ones doing it. It requires people to say “this is shameful” to make it so. I am not saying here that they cannot heal and grow and be different over time, but as long as they stay where they were at when they hurt us, their shame should be an indication that this was incredibly wrong.

In fact, I have found that the way someone / society talks about situations reinforces or diminishes the shame in a bad way. The other day, as I was talking to this guy from work about my brother, he said he had done the slang equivalent of a “stupid and bad thing” in French (une connerie) and I was left stunt as if that was the good qualifier for what he did to me/us. Hundreds of rapes? Probably not. My brother should feel so incredibly ashamed. He’s a criminal who had no remorse and manipulates everyone around him. It’s hard though, to call out someone for having done such bad things. It feels almost impossible to be that bad. When I see my other siblings and my mother struggle with what happened, I wonder where they’re at in their shame and guilt. They haven’t cut ties with our brother, it seems he is still completely a part of the family and shame and denial are going hand in hand, as if our absence is more acceptable than his guilt and criminality. Shame (which is deeply rooted in fear) has a tendency to prevent people from showing up for people, whether it is to do the right thing or not doing the wrong thing. It sticks and freezes people in their track with a major “what if” (what if I’m wrong, what if I lose something, what if I’m bad for doing one thing or the other, what if I was bad before). There are lots of questions that are left unanswered with shame because they are simply not the right questions at all. So they’re also ashamed of their behavior but can’t move or do anything about it and denial holds them together. When they see us in person, their behaviors are erratic, illogical, hiding and basically filled with shame. But as they’re all acting the exact same way, as a group, they validate each other’s behavior.

The issue with feeling shame is that it prevents you from doing things and sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. If you don’t feel it ever, you’re a psychopath. If you feel it, i’s worth discovering the how and the why. Maybe it’s your parent’s value system that isn’t aligned with your actions. But maybe it’s a crime and you really shouldn’t be doing this because the entire social system is telling you that it is unacceptable. Or maybe it’s about grief and needing to realign your values with the new information that crushed your soul. If you don’t do it though, you are bound to feel ashamed and stay stuck. It can be information that something needs to change, a call for action. There is shame that tells you that you’re doing the wrong thing, shame that makes you think, shame that makes you realize you need to choose your values more wisely and with more attention. And there is shame that you should discard, shame that doesn’t belong to you, shame that crushes you in your tracks when you need to be valued and feel worthy, shame that is all connected to trauma and that needs to be said “NO” to.

Working on shame has meant one major thing for us all: we rarely find ourselves shaming people now. When people feel shame around us, we work very hard to understand what is going on to manage to stay regulated as much as possible in the conversation. If our worth is discussed, we can fight back more easily. It is a kind of super power, especially considering it was our whole life before and we kept running into people whose shame bounced off with ours which made for terrible relationships and friendships. It also means that our friends often feel safe with us (from what they’ve said to us). One of our friends once said “to you I can say that” and then proceeded to explain something extremely shameful to her. That day we felt blessed to be spoken to this way.

Shame requests an open heart and an open mind. If it is met with more shame, it hurts too much. If I stand tall with my feet on the ground, it is totally possible for me to fight back and say no to things that don’t meet my understanding of self worth. Sometimes it takes me to go to therapy, figure it out and come back to say no. It’s not always a direct “no” in the midst of the conversation. But I have an inner mechanism in place to refuse their opinion as truth, no matter how it makes me feel. Because shame lies to me.

It also means that if I am reading a book that brings up a lot of shame for my system, we can try to stay calm and accept that it is what is happening, sit with the discomfort. We try to accept that we need to learn and it’s triggering to us all. We can accept to keep reading. When I thought my shame was my only “thinking pattern” and there was just no self-worth underneath, I couldn’t have read a book that made me feel ashamed. We would have hated myself so fast, I would have just stopped listening or reading. It would have been too hard and too painful to see how unworthy I am. We still have huge trouble with psychology books for that very reason. But now I know, it has nothing to do with my self-worth.

A recent experience finally reminded us that working through shame brings up a lot of unprocessed anger (and associated feelings). By that we mean that as younger humans, we didn’t think we had any self-worth so the evidence shown to us through abuse was very clear and easy to “accept”. It was difficult to refuse being abused when we thought the abuse was legitimate and we deserved it. No one had ever told us otherwise. But working through shame and our feeling of worthlessness brings up extreme rage which is difficult to deal with. It’s a back and forth as we cannot deal with the entirety of our anger all at once, at the risk of traumatizing ourselves. We have to take it one step at a time and as such, accept that our shame still defines us partially. The question of self-worth and being actually worthy to be alive and treated correctly shines a bright light on all those who didn’t treat us correctly and that bright light can really be too much for our nervous system. It is a work-in-progress. Slow and steady wins the race.