SHAME AND BLAME
August 9, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
“As ACA becomes a safe place for you, you will find freedom to express all the hurts and fears you have kept inside and to free yourself from the shame and blame that are carryovers from the past.” BRB p. 590
“The cycle of shame and blame was well established in our families of origin. We heard abusive words and/or were physically punished. We emerged from all of this with an established sense of shame that included thinking of ourselves as
- Defective: something is wrong with me
- Helpless: nothing can be done about this
- Alone: nobody else has this problem
As adults, some of us found that if we shifted blame to others, we could hide our own sense of shame. Some of us may have lashed out with extreme anger, not knowing where it came from, or used perfectionism, pride, people-pleasing, and approval-seeking to cover up our sense of shame. Some of us fell victim to addictions.
In ACA, we come to appreciate that there is nothing wrong with us that meetings, a sponsor and consistently working the Steps cannot overcome. Shame and blame give way to an understanding that we make mistakes, but we are not mistakes! We claim the identity that we are inherently good, even with all our perceived misgivings, warts and dents.
On this day I will use my courage and honesty to break the generational bonds of shame and blame.”
My Experience:
My drugs of choice were anger and perfectionism. I understand now that I chose those in order to cover up the fact that I felt like something was wrong with me, I was unwanted, and I was unworthy of love. I know I shifted blame to others in an attempt to keep up the charade of perfectionism. And when that didn’t work, I just displayed this outrageous anger to convince others that I was perfect. I am in a place today that I know that I did some bad things, but I am not a bad person. I was convinced that I was a bad person for a lifetime, what a relief to know that I am not. What that looked like and how I justified continual bad behavior was by saying, “that is just who I am.” Today I say, no it is not who I am and I have moved away from the bad behavior.
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