Shame

what does one do when repeated instances of grief, each iteration more debilitating and severe and in its morbid newness and uniqueness visits you constantly? Even as i expand my life in all slowness, caution and in guarded hope, there's grief (and i'm looking at grief beyond death) constantly assailing, growing ... in fact experience of loss, shame, failure, goes not just to fill your life but envelopes you... though at 56 and supposedly erudite it behooves that I be sober and equanimous. But…😢

so fondly remember, recall my carefree youth…when I had hope, faith, zest and was adventurous. Maybe I did lapse and sinned too in some terms…but nothing to justify the havoc been constantly wreaked on me today - personal & professional! Reduced to a vegetative state, in complete loneliness, scared of people and embarrassed of myself …! a bleak, devastated landscape, battle weary, battered, in grief diminished by circumstances, misfortune & mocked repeatedly that assaults my sense of well being… in many ways contra to wisdom of ‘being in the present’, recoursing to my past is perhaps the only way i feel good about myself today to the extent that it helps…the here and now not to speak about future dishevelling my mind, body & soul.

My daschund Mily tries its best to comfort and give me some meaning in my destitution … 😢
#destitution #Anxiety #Shame #Depression #prolongedgrief #Grief #SuicidalThoughts

met my doctor/counselor yesterday…I have been suffering with prolonged depression and grief…well more than a decade. My counselor acknowledged life has been very severe on me. Repeated losses, failures, shame which has left me scarred and scared making me severely anxious. It may often appear, for a man who is 56, that my angst and lament, vulnerability and anxiety are more of a mis-besotted teen, very juvenile. Maybe that’s my senility. I have prolonged depressive disorder… My doc feels there was perhaps a melancholic disposition inherent in me even earlier as a kid…continuous setbacks, personal & professional has permanently impaired me…😢 the worse is my loneliness…no one sees my grief and the abjectness of my condition…dismissing it, ridiculing it, comparing and invalidating it…This becomes more humiliating. For now there’s one friend who supports & understands…doesn’t judge me…stays with me when possible… hears me out… rest are all very instrumentally helpful at best if not totally indifferent. With no spouse, kids or siblings, my isolation is total. My career too was continuously bewitched that further debilitated my esteem and dignity. Repeated setbacks aggravated my despair and i just had to give up work too. People familiar with my history which I have shared many times over the years here may also be tired reading all over again. Yet I hope few will still remain empathetic and reach out.

Many feel that because I look for meaning in everything I do, I have ended up so. Few look for meaning - work, family and even socialisation is all out there and people carry it out their roles as a machine meant to carry out its functions. This may look very existential reasoning but existentialism I imagine is not something that emerges in such mundanity and routines but through deep thoughts. However to transcend mind and meanings in certain agency and subjectivity is beyond an ordinary me. Guess most today are socialised into indifference by default. Being and remaining an automaton serves the larger system too which thrives in its meaninglessness and folks are primed to merely play out their roles.

Friends who still may care are perhaps helpless…but to me their helplessness appears like indifference and cold diffidence. My doc recognises how i still do my best to keep myself functional…but just not enough to keep myself sane for long…medicines help but they can only go so far . Some worthies aver that the only control I have is in my ability to respond to crisis…not the repeated and crushing episodes, failures, loss 😞. That life is not fair is so brutally exemplified in my life story. The misery, the damnation, the horror of loss, grief and loneliness. This strangely I feel I cannot get over and it’s not even meant to be gotten over. A life of despair, melancholia, grief is a permanent part of me but which in many ways also helps me to understand the world, existence differently and expose many of the shibboleths that people carry both aware and unaware. Yet the extreme sense of failure overwhelms and death as relieving from misery is a possibility that reigns my mind always. 😞🙏🏽 #Grief #melancholia #prolongedepressive #Anxiety #Loneliness #acuteisolation #Depression #Shame #failure #SuicidalThoughts

I woke up this morning after having had a very interesting dream. I've always thought that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung's work on Dream Theory was rubbish, given that most of my dreams are silly, but this last one was profound in its realism, and makes me think that they were not just onto something, they were geniuses.

So it's only dreams related to real life (present or past) that matter - not just any random dream. (Flying on the back of a magical hippo in your underpants doesn't count, there's nothing to learn there!). It's got to relate to an incident that you have experienced or are experiencing. A recreation of the event.

A random example: You're at home, in the company of someone you know well. You get into an argument, and it gets vicious, possibly violent. For whatever reason, let's assume that person is no longer in your real life (moved on, deceased, whatever reason applies), so you can't ask them about the incident in reality, therefore pay attention to the dream. It will reveal an extension of their personality, and you may learn a few things about them that you hadn't realised before. It will likely be unpleasant, though very cathartic - because it will give you some understanding and insight on the issue.

Freud and Jung were not the first to come up with Dream Theory, they just made it a proper science. A key example of this was in Ancient Greece: they did their own version of Dream Theory in a place called Epidaurus. There was a temple to the god Asclepius (god of medicine), son of the god Apollo (god of healing in general.) People who required healing went there and slept upon the ground of the temple overnight. Asclepius would 'inspire' them through revelatory dreams, then the priests would help interpret them in the morning. (Oh, and harmless snakes were in the temple as well, because they were symbolic of Asclepius and believed to help promote the dreams. They freely moved around as you slept, including over you.)

Back to the dream. In it, you likely experience it from the perspective of 'first person' (as yourself, seeing through your own eyes) and/or 'third person' (from a distance, watching yourself. 'Second person' is never you.) Either way, you get to experience the incident safely. No matter what happens in the dream, it's not happening in reality, because you are asleep. Because of this, you can witness the incident without being 100% involved in it. If you get injured in the dream, no pain will be felt, for instance. You will likely feel the emotions, but nothing physical. No broken bones, no nothing. You are safe.

When you wake up, you will likely still feel emotions related to the dream: anger, sadness, fear, whatever. During this time, write down as much of the dream as you can remember, while it still lingers. Most dreams we don't remember for more than a few seconds/minutes, but ones like these tend to linger for a little while, because we had so much psychological investment in them. Make sure you write down the parts that are revelatory - that you didn't notice in reality.

Next step. When your emotions are gone and your head is clear (say, the next day or so), go back to your notes and reflect upon them.

🔸️ Some questions to reflect upon:

📍 What did the dream reveal that you didn't experience during the real incident?
📍 What did the dream tell you about how you coped with the incident?
📍 What did the dream tell you about how the other person coped with the incident?
📍 What feelings did the dream evoke while you were asleep?
📍 What feelings did the dream evoke while you were awake? (After the dream happens, there's always a secondary emotion(s) you feel while awake as your brain tries to sort out what to make of it.)
📍 If you witness that you are the one at 'fault' in the dream, can you acknowledge this to yourself? Can you try to understand why it happened, and seek to forgive yourself?
📍 It you witness that it was not you at 'fault', can forgive the other person? (It's okay if you can't, but try to see their motivation: did they react the way they did because of anger? Fear? Guilt/shame? What else?)
📍 It's possible that you are both equally at 'fault'. If that is the case, then perhaps you are looking at a core difference between you, irreconcilable or otherwise. Seeing this, can you forgive your part in it? Can you move on from the situation, with your new knowledge?
📍 Are there any changes you would make to your real life? (This is working under the assumption that you cannot reach the other person, so any changes must be about yourself, not them.)
📍 If you feel you need to change something about yourself personally in reality, do you have any supports who can help you? (Family? Friends? A therapist? A psychiatrist?)

After going through all of that, it's important to acknowledge the hard work you've put into the reflection. (It's not an easy thing to do, and may churn up possible guilt/shame, especially if you feel you are the one at 'fault'.) It is something that will require some self-care. But it is also something worth treating with respect: Celebrate it, if you can, you've earned it.

#Dream #Dreaming #PTSD #Trauma #Therapy #MentalHealth #Journaling #analysis #freud #jung #Grief #Shame #Selfcare #Recovery

I lost my father. Then I had to give up my job. I was humiliated and sidelined and the organization I worked for was indeed doing little value addition. Then my wife decided to leave me. We separated. In the process I also lost a beautiful house built on the hills with so much passion, hope and dreams together. I lost the entire eco system - literal and social. Later I lost both my dogs too. They were intensely soulful creatures who grew with us and so central in our relationship. But i bear no ill will towards my ex - just shame and guilt that I couldn’t take good care of her and couldn’t afford much meaning to her. Last year i lost my mother. Not that we were very close and we got along too well but still my long visits to her home located in rich sylvan surroundings and warm caretakers was lost too. Most of friends and acquaintances disappeared as well. Kins were too self opinionated and who constantly invalidated my grief and indeed always belittled my ‘being’ for long even before my life took the turn for the worse. Except for an old uncle of mine i don’t feel like seeking out an extended family psychologically illiterate and shorn of aesthetic and cultural capital and too caught in their self righteousness.

Acute uprootedness, loneliness, emotional exhaustion hollows and wrings you out. That i’m much late in my adulthood and almost going to be an ‘elder’ makes matters more shameful. I live alone (have no siblings either let alone kids) with my new daschund just doing what little needed to keep me going - cooking, gardening, reading and blogging. I manage to do some art work too. Medicines seem to wearing off in its effect to keep me sane and counseling too over so many years barely of little help anymore.

The overwhelming failures and setbacks all my life and so repeated despite being well qualified, well read, and contributed so much to my work domain (again all painfully unrecognised) affects me to the extent that suicidal thoughts are always at the top of my mind. The misery, dismay, shock of how horribly matters have gone wrong, having been cheated by people, circumstances and I dare say by Gods themselves surges and spikes in waves choking you, reducing you to complete tears and feeling crushed. i’m completely invisible and destitute today and making each day is a painful and exhausting struggle. It’s bad faith that still prevents me doing the inevitable. #SuicidalIdeation #Loneliness #Shame #Guilt #miseryofliving #Grief

What’s your name? People and life might try and call you many names. Names like, forgotten, broken, damaged or unworthy. They are not your names. Your name is also not hopeless, too much, victim or unwanted.

Your name is “precious, worthy, loved and unique “. You are a work in progress whose time to shine will come. You are not just a survivor but a thriver. You are not alone. You matter. Call the negative labels out for what they are, lies.

Hope calls your name!

From my neck of the woods, I say happy Sunday evening! I hope our week will carry us to greater depths of the knowledge of God. May he allow us to focus on our “daily bread,” or our daily nutritional substance, and not attempt to figure out the following day’s needs.

This day started with me petitioning God for wisdom concerning a friend’s health. Hours later, I learned the person left this earth hours before my request was made known to our Lord. I am content. He knows all things. Healing does not require my stamp of approval from a learned societal (earthly) throne room position.

A surrendered life allows the Lord to be Lord, in all things.

Even if understanding is limited and out of reach, God is faithful to hear those petitions for wisdom as well. He is interested in us trusting him with our naked shame, which we often believe we must cover ourselves from BEFORE walking with the Father. Not so. That is a result of “the fall” that drops us from the closeness of our relational Creator, The Lord God Almighty.❤️