I really hate shame

[WitzEndWife]

I've come to the conclusion that, if it were not for my deep sense of shame, I could probably avoid most of these extended blow ups. Yes, I'm in therapy, and yes I'm working on it, but I keep letting him trigger me. Last night, I ordered us dinner from a food delivery app because it was sort of late for us and I didn't feel like making anything. After I ordered, I realized that the app had defaulted my order to my GPS location, and not the address I put in for my account (a truly stupid feature, but I digress). There was nowhere on the order that I could edit the address, so I at first updated it with a note, telling the driver that the address was actually across the street. I told uBPDh this, and he kind of freaked out over the address not being right, so I second guessed myself over it. I went into the app and found the addresses listed under my account and was able to delete the wrong one it kept defaulting to, but doing so eliminated any address on my order. I went into the help of the app - which was clunky and awful - and it told me that I couldn't update my address once an order had been placed, and that I would have to cancel and re-order. So, I canceled the order. However, it wouldn't let me re-order, saying the restaurant was now "too busy." I told my uBPDh this, and he said I should have let him handle it and went on and on about how I "f**ked the driver and the restaurant over" and really laid it on thick. Now, at this point, it was around 8:30p.m. and I had been working all day and my "padding" and emotional energy had been completely tapped. The shame spiral switch flipped immediately for me. "Well, I guess I'm just a MORON who shouldn't do anything, ever again!" I spiked out. And the boulders started rolling from there. It escalated, he ended up screaming that he hated me and wanted a divorce, that I was a contemptible person and that I "can never just be pleasant to be around," and I went into deep self loathing, saying I should just die then, since he hated me so much.
I'm never proud when this happens. It hasn't happened for a long time, but he has a way of making me feel unworthy of even breathing air. I locked myself in the second bedroom, and he stood outside, lecturing me, for about 10 minutes, then he calmly said that if I didn't come unlock the door, he would have to take the doorknob off. I didn't do anything, so he did. Then, of course, he was trying to be all nicey nice, like nothing happened. He's still sucking up to me today.
I feel emotionally hung over today in a big way. It feels like when this shame spiral stuff happens that I'm a different person. I'm not the calm, strong, rational being I am most of the time. It's like I channel all of my frustration toward him into beating myself up.

[Cat Familiar]

As an experiment, let’s imagine you get something positive out of shame. I know. You’re probably rolling your eyes reading this. What on earth could be a positive outcome from feeling something so uncomfortable?

OK, so maybe there isn’t much positive now, but perhaps there was once.  Maybe when you were young. Maybe not, but let’s just let imagination run here for a while.

Typically we humans don’t repeat behaviors unless there is some positive outcome at first. Then we can often continue doing something that doesn’t net us anything of value, just out of habit, but often there’s still a tiny morsel of benefit.

So, to go back to your experience last night, can you imagine anything marginally positive about experiencing the shame you felt?

As you do that, I’ll give it a shot and you can see if anything I come up with resonates for you or if I’m totally off base.

Your husband did apologize to you and he tried to rescue you. You had a break from being the strong lady executive and could feel weak and vulnerable. You could feel your feelings, though they weren’t feelings you really wanted to feel.

[Notwendy]

I can relate to the shame triggers. Thankfully, I don't experience them as much since I have worked on co-dependency and boundaries.

I think Cat's idea of secondary reinforcement is interesting. I didn't consider that before, but it's something to think about.

I think the origin for me is familial. I think my BPD mother struggles with that. I am not sure, as she doesn't express that she feels that way but I think it causes her to act out. Her FOO is critical, and she's critical too, but sometimes that also comes from being self critical.

I also believe we match our partners in our ability to regulate emotions, even if it isn't exactly the same way. My H has a father who is critcal and shaming. I can see that he feels very hurt by any type of critical comment, or possible mistake and so I think we are both sensitive to possible shameful feelings.

For example, the food order. It wasn't a disaster, it was a mistake. It surely didn't have serious consequences, nobody got hurt. It was a simple human/tech error. Someone else might have been irritated, annoyed, but would not self depreciate over it. Why is that? I think the difference is a boundary one, how you think about yourself. Yes, you made a mistake but that doesn't mean you ARE a mistake. It's the mental drift from "I made a mistake" to "I am defective" that sent you into the spiral. But that is dysfunctional thinking. You aren't defined by making a mistake on an app.

In my FOO, mistakes were unforgivable. If my BPD mother had asked me to order dinner, and that mistake happened, she would believe I did it on purpose to hurt her, or that somehow it was about her,  and she'd dysregulate and criticize me ( kind of like your H did). She'd get my Dad involved, I would feel bad about myself. But what started this? It was the faulty thinking that somehow I did the error on purpose or it was about her. Not what really happened.

For my H, in his family, his father would have criticized him, and tell him it happened because he was incompetent. Because he grew up with this, when I make an error, he reacts the way he was treated. That triggers me, because of how I was raised, and it sets the stage for drama.

This is how little things ( and it really was a small mistake) turn into what happened. The other factor was HALT ( hungry, angry, lonely, tired) circumstances that make it hard for us to keep our cool. You were both hungry and you were tired.

It was an unintended mistake. It is not irrepairable. If you think you owe the restoraunt  or driver for the dinner, that can be fixed- call them, ask , and offer to pay or tip the driver. You didn't intentionally hurt anyone- and if your H accused you of that, that doesn't make it true. You know your intentions. He doesn't. What he says doesn't define you. You can also think "why did he react that way" -well possibly because he has a parent who acted that way too. He's shame triggered too. You made the mistake but with his poor boundaries, he sees this as being about him. Then, he projected his bad feelings at you. Knowing how you feel might help you see where he is coming from when he does that. The next time something like this happens, you might be able to step back and not react as if it was personal to you.

It was just a mistake, nothing more.

[WitzEndWife]

Cat, I definitely have a hard time seeing the positive in my shame. I'm ashamed by my shame. Ha. But I do get where you're going with it. Yes, I could be real, I could be authentic to me, and I could be, at some level, heard by my husband, because at least he does understand shame after he comes down. I still feel awful, but I do get it.

Notwendy, I definitely think it's good to reality check myself in this case. My husband was repeating his abuse, and I was absorbing it and taking it all as truth. I was definitely tired and hungry. It was not a good situation at all for either of us. I know that I definitely have made progress on my shame, and I know the process isn't linear. It's still painful when you give into it, and it feels so terrible the next day.

[Cat Familiar]

Here’s my thought on shame. I think it’s a necessary developmental step for us to experience as children in order for us to develop a moral compass.

It becomes problematic when our parents overemphasize it, perhaps due to their own issues, and then we internalize it and overuse it ourselves.

That you have it signals a high level of compassion and the ability to put yourself in others’ shoes. That you beat yourself up with it indicates that you’ve gotten stuck in the mechanics of it and are not noticing it’s higher purpose.

Someone without shame would not have sympathy for the driver nor the restaurant owner, but you do. So that night you could have stopped the process right there and figured out what you could have done to make things right.

That’s the end of the “need” for that emotion. Any more feeling shame is getting stuck in a loop.

Next time you feel shame, ask it what it’s trying to tell you. You might be surprised by the answer.

[Notwendy]

I think posters know I like the co-dependency 12 step model. It took me a long time to understand the "addiction" connection since I don't drink much and alcohol isn't an issue for my situation. But that awful feeling the next morning was a clue. I had described it as feeling beat up, worn out. I know that feeling and experienced it many times.

I thought about what that felt like- an emotional hangover and that helped me to identify what was going on. That somehow I had taken the emotional bait and indulged in some kind of emotional drama. I think we can in a way get addicted to that, and when we get that upset, we do flood ourselves with adrenaline, and this gets a sort of high, or drunk like response as if we did drugs or alcohol and we can feel awful the next day.

So I began to imagine every time I felt emotionally triggered that I was being offered a drink, or a drug- not literally, but emotionally. As Cat said- are you getting something out of this behavior? That was a hard one to think about, but was I indulging in an emotional storm- and feeling an emotional hangover the next day?

I know everyone has their preference for how to describe this, but for me - having a model to work on for myself was the main point, whether or not it was the most accurate description or truth. Imagining the drama bait as a drug or drink and the feeling the next day as an "emotional hangover" helped me to avoid getting into circular arguments and shame triggers- so the result was helpful no matter how I described it.