"You Are Not Wrong" or Reflections of the Bottomless Pit of Shame

You Are Not Wrong

A favourite mantra of mine, a line given me by therapist Mark R. Carlson is: "There are no throw-away people. There are no throw-away people.  There are no throw-away people."

A deep core fear for many of us is that we are not good enough.  It doesn't matter what childhood wounds you did or didn't get, or what privileges you do or don't have.  Deep down, most of us are terrified that we don't deserve love, life, joy, fulfillment.... You name it.

I can get very clear that someone else is worthy and deserving.  Place this or that shining soul in front of me and I have no doubt.  But when it comes to me....  I am just as terrified as the next one.  "I am too broken.  I was born too broken.  I am a failure."

I have recently been exploring my personal "bottomless pit of shame."  I seem to have a free-fall mechanism.  Push the right button and I swan-dive into self-loathing.  There doesn't even seem to be a choice-point.  One minute I am fine, the next I think I don't deserve to live.  

To quote from a beloved movie, The Emperor's New Groove: "Pull the lever Kronk!" (Splash!) "Wrong lever!" (Scrambles out dripping with a crocodile attached to her skirt.) "Why do we even have that lever?!"  

Exactly.

Why do I even have that lever?!

Even realizing I have that lever can pull the lever.  Sploosh!  "I am an idiot.  I should die.  No one could possibly love me now...."

So I am kicking off the latest clinging batch of crocodiles and observing the mechanism.  I am working on posting a sign, "Wrong lever!" on it.  After all, it is the lever of "wrong-being."  It is the switch that gets thrown when I am thrown into my terror of essential wrongness.  

"There are no throw-away people.  There are no throw-away people.  There are no throw-away people."

So, I really believe that!  I really do, especially when it comes to others, and I'm working on transferring that same clarity back to myself.

I am also hoping like crazy my kids managed to escape that particular inner dynamic, but I do know that bucketloads of folks my age and up have it.  So that's who I am speaking to.  (Or if you want to be correct, "That is to whom I am speaking," said with appropriate somber face and slight British accent.)

"So folks, if you direct your eyes to the right, we have the Bottomless Pit of Shame, or Essential Wrong-Being."  

Honestly, most of the time I ignore it like the plague.  Some groups and mind-sets want me to paint a smiley face on it and pretend it isn't there.  But since that hasn't ever worked for me, I am now studying it.  I am looking at it from all sides and seeing what I can learn.  

I have actually had a moment of clarity right on the lip of the pit.   I had a moment when I thought I had been a public ass and everybody saw it.  I was fixing to do my best triple flip into the muck, and an incredibly intuitive and wise soul stepped up next to me and said something that made me pause.  I stood there, staring down, feeling the tug of the gravity, and didn't jump.

I felt the terror, but didn't fall.  

That was when I realized that I might one day develop the ability to choose not to pull that lever.  (Okay, yes.  I'm mixing metaphors.  We've got levers and crocodiles, jumping, and diving and falling, pits and muck.  I'm just assuming y'all can follow where I'm going.)

I am working on remembering that I don't belong there.

My point is:  If there are no throw-away people, NOBODY deserves to be in that pit.  Nobody.  Nobody deserves to live in the fear of being too broken, or too essentially WRONG to deserve to be part of life.  Nobody.

Period.

Perhaps that is why so many of us cling to a need to be right so intensely?  We are so terrified of being WRONG?  Life is never about being right, but about being loving, eh?  But so many of us get trapped in the need to be right.  If it is a misguided way to avoid the bottomless pit of shame, I can understand getting trapped there.  It doesn't work, but I can understand it.

If we are still lovable even when we make mistakes; if we are still lovable even when we harbour misinformation, then we have nothing to be afraid of.  And we are more likely to learn and course-correct faster if we aren't afraid of seeing where we are mistaken.  There is no need to dive into shame if we make a mistake.

Because LOVE will catch us every time we fall.  So I'm committed to living with less fear of being wrong.  After all, when we remember that LOVE will catch us every time we fall, we will be less afraid to make courageous leaps into a more joyful, less fearful life. 

Who's with me?

Love and hugs, Alison