Shame

I have struggled with shame all of my life, though it wasn't until my 30's that I was able to identify and define it. I personally define shame as the belief that there's something innately or inherently wrong with you, that in some way you fail to measure up to some arbitrary standard. This is different from feeling guilt which is the result of having done something.  Guilt comes from doing, shame comes from just being.

While I've made huge strides in learning how to be less hard on myself in the past ten years, it's become apparent to me that I still have a very deep fundamental sense of shame. Someone did a study into the neuroscience behind how we experience shame and how we respond to it and explains it as follows:

"When we experience shame, it interrupts the parasympathetic drive system, which runs our rational thinking, empathy, and positive social engagement. Instead, shame says “no” in a way that activates the sympathetic drive—the flight or fight system—of a person’s brain."

And I've responded in both ways - at times I've behaved in an antagonistic/abrasive way, but more often than not, I tend to withdraw, even when I go out, I set up boundaries that keep people at arm's length. But there's more:

"Shame also activates circuits in the right hemisphere and temporal lobes, which are the parts of the brain that help us perceive emotion. We experience shame most powerfully in glances, tones, and body language rather than through literal words. 
Conversely, shame can make it difficult for me to move. I turn inward and away from other people, disintegrating myself from them. Our brains help us sense, feel, and interact with other people. When shame strikes, these systems literally go offline, and they are quite difficult to get back online."

Definitely been there and done that.

The lie I believe about myself is typically refuted just about every time I choose to engage with other people and just be myself, yet I still hesitate to put myself out there.

The point of this is that the typical response to shame - resulting in our distancing ourselves even more away from those around us - also prevents us from healing our shame by entering into a healthy affirming community. So it's not just about recognizing our own shame, but also recognizing our response to it, and choosing to behave differently.

I am dreading facing up to this. My sense of shame makes me want to be alone, but now I know I must become very intentional about NOT being alone. And there are people waiting for me to deal with this and overcome this adversity. That might be even more frightening to contemplate.

Asian and yet not Asian.

It's Memorial day and a holiday, which prompted my going out for dim sum at a popular restaurant in the SGV (San Gabriel Valley, home to the most diverse collection of different regional Chinese cuisines outside China) .

Despite my ethnic heritage and my familiarity with the cuisine, every time I go, I feel a sense of dis-ease; despite my sharing an ethnic heritage with all the restaurant staff and a vast majority of the patrons, it's still like visiting another country and I often observe what goes on around me not unlike an anthropologist observing a native culture.

I can hear Cantonese being spoken by everyone around me, though it's not possible to make out any single conversation. I imagine that there are a series of mating calls going on in how the ladies pushing the carts call out the items on their carts to the people sitting at the tables as they pass by.  I observe the plumage of various individual... specimens. Women clutching "Guccci" bags (with three "C"s), men sporting watches bearing the name "ROLLEXX".

For all that, even though I make these observations with more than a little bemusement, I am aware that I am the Klingon in the room. And this contributes to my sense of shame - which is VERY asian.

Cultural Appropriation

There's a place up in Portland called Kook's Burritos. Public pressure has prompted them to close because in a featured article, they admitted the recipe for their tortillas was essentially purloined from natives of the city of Puerto Nuevo in Mexico, est. pop; of 135 in 2010.

While I'm naturally sympathetic to the idea of minority ethnic cultures somehow being assimilated,  I have to categorize this particular protest as a result of the professionally indignant, and leave it at that.

Being Intentional

We're still on the subject of rewriting our book covers, but this is about being intentional about getting the new cover seen by the people who need to see it. I made a point of telling a musician friend about my ebook on music theory. He reviewed it and now he wants to use it as a reference for his students. The point is that you can't just wait to be discovered. At the same time, one shouldn't expect to do a complete makeover over night, though I suppose that if you're capable of that, go for it, definitely do not let my baggage get in your way.

Part of my personal inertia comes from lessons I was taught in church from the Scriptures; one such lesson is the story of a young leader in the New Testament named Timothy. Timothy was chosen by Paul the apostle to become a respected leader. Timothy didn't lobby for the opportunity, Paul heard good things about Timothy and Paul did his own due diligence, traveling to various places and getting other people's opinions about Timothy before approaching Timothy and offering Timothy the chance to join Paul.  I still believe that that is the Biblical approach to identifying leadership. But it's not an effective approach to marketing one's self.  It's further complicated by a principle instilled in me (again from the Scriptures) about how we should endeavor to do good deeds without making any attempt to bring attention to them. Of course, I violate this principle every time I point out my scar and tell people how I got it. Hey, I'm human. Then there's the values (albeit sometimes conflicting) I inherited from my asian heritage in how it's wrong to stand out (although it's seemingly OK to be bragged about by a proud parent).

The point is that it's not about my specific challenges per se, but the process of identifying what they are and reconciling them to what needs to be done to put yourself out there in a healthy & natural way. For me, I see a large part of it as reminding myself that as I put myself out there, it's not my only goal; there is no one more interesting than someone who wants to learn more about you, and I am out there as much to learn about everyone about me, and connect the dots where it makes sense to put the right people together. The folks who only want to talk about themselves and are not interested in discovering who I am, it's going to be OK to move on and prioritize my time accordingly.

Rewriting The Book Cover

My previous post was about how we judge people based on the images they present of themselves and how much more complicated it is when we recognize that we as people typically present an image that is not representative of themselves.  It's relatively simple to understand when people are motivated to get others to think the best of them. The flip side of the coin isn't so easy to understand. Going into detail concerning the motivations of that deserves its own post; suffice it to say that many of us have been programmed to think less highly of ourselves than we ought in a way that prompts us to diminish the image of ourselves instead of thinking of others more highly. We write our book covers in a way that prompts people to leave us on the shelf even if we're the only book on the shelf at the time.

Rewriting our book covers is hard, but it might be the easiest step in the process. First, one has to be able to recognize the pattern exists. This might be the hardest part; the pattern can be quite obvious, but the typical response is denial and rationalization because no one wants to acknowledge what is to them a painful truth. The tragedy is that the 'truth' one's been trained to believe about themselves is in fact a lie. The process that prompted belief in this lie may not have been motivated by malice, but the result is the same. I used to make fun of people that were in what was to me obvious denial, but I've come to respect how it takes a lot of strength and courage to come to grips with things like these.

If you're still tracking with me, great. Speaking as someone who's come to recognize how I've believed certain things about myself that are in fact not true, I'm looking at certain patterns I've repeated in my life, and one of these things is discovering how I've written my metaphorical book cover and how I've used it to keep a lot of people at arm's length.

My book cover as I see it has relatively little reference to my musical background. This reflects a couple of lies I've believed:

1) I'm not a 'legit' musician because I somehow lacked the appropriate pedigree;
2) It's good to have musical ability, but it's somehow not appropriate to enjoy it

to the point that I've struggled with a lot of repressed anger over not expressing that aspect of who I am.

This is the part of my book cover I'm working to rewrite at this time;  I've written an ebook on music theory, and I've started offering music instruction, and I'm slowly creating a niche for myself working with younger students. It's already starting to pay off; a lot of the music world knows me as a dancer, but as I was speaking with a band member during a break, he asked about my musical background and I mentioned that I first started with violin and that I was giving music lessons. It turned out that he has two kids and he's looking for an instructor for them.

I guess the point is that rewriting the cover also requires putting yourself out there with the new cover so people can see it.

Book Covers

The maxim: Don't judge a book by its cover just seems so trite. But there's a reason why it's a maxim. I got reminded of this recently. It's easy to categorize people mentally based on appearances, especially when you deal with a certain segment of the society over a period of time.  But I got reminded recently that appearances can be deceiving.

Dinners in the park are for most part a pretty orderly affair; sometimes there are people waiting at the curb, and they help me carry stuff from the car.  Everyone tends to let the ladies and/or disabled folks, when there are any, go first.  One week while I was still setting up, someone came up to our tables, cut through the line, and began poking through the stuff asking what was for dinner. The person happened to be male, probably about 6'2", about 300 lbs, with unkempt hair and a scraggly beard.  Everybody kinda got out of his way, and I got the impression that they were familiar with him. The first impressions that went through my mind were along the lines of how everyone was clearly intimidated by his size & his brusque manner and my first instinct was to categorize him as a bully.  I told him politely that dinner that night would salad, rice and whatever main dish we happened to be serving that night, but we were still geting ready. We'd start serving shortly and if he got in line, I'd make sure that there'd be enough left for him to get a full plate.    I was pleasantly surprised when he responded. "oh. ok." and he went to the end of the line.  This person, who I will call "C", has come back most weeks.  While he's clearly a bit rough around the edges when it comes to social skills and boundaries, I've sensed no malice.

The lesson got reinforced yesterday morning. There's a man who sits at a street corner you have to pass by if you take a certain freeway exit in Pasadena. This street corner is blocks away from any sort of building or available parking; you have to make a deliberate choice to walk there and sit there. He usually has a pit bull chained to a fence. A lot of people occupy corners like that, usually sporting a sign stating that they need help. Yesterday as I was pulling up to that corner, I happened to make eye contact, and I said "Sorry." He promptly responded "Did I ask you for anything?" to which I replied, "No. But we made eye contact, and I wanted to make sure you knew that I saw you." He then said "I just like to spend a lot of time here." Then he wished me a good day, and I did likewise before I drove off.

I could stop here and have a nice trite blog post. However, there's a flip side; the book covers we write for ourselves, consciously and sub-consciously. It seems to me that we'd all benefit from a third party review of ourselves and the image we try to craft for ourselves. Some folks probably stretch the truth. Others find seeming modest ways of emphasizing things they're proud of: a current TV show features a character who was called out for using the phrase "I went to school outside Boston"  as a disingenuous way of announcing the fact that he went to Harvard. That comes with the territory when you have an ego.

Then there are folks who go the other direction, o keep people at arm's length,  typically to minimize the pain/fear of rejection.  I know that I do this. I know I need to look at this, but this means I have to revisit unpleasant memories. Frankly, this terrifies me.

Progress?

I moved a while back, and I was back in my old neighborhood and I noticed that a local hardware store had closed. The place had been open for decades and had become my go-to spot to find the obscure nut/bolt/whatever I needed to replace/fix something that needed attention. The prices were higher, but it was worth it to walk in knowing that in five minutes I'd be walking back out with exactly what I needed vs. searching through the various franchised hardware chain stores hoping to find an employee who could point me to the right aisle only to discover that they didn't carry the obscure diameter/length/fitting a half hour later.

I love the convenience of online shopping, etc. but I lament that something of value is being lost, and when the last local hardware store closes it'll be gone forever.

Winning

I have a few favorite TV shows: Breaking Bad, Spooks (MI-5), Wiseguy, Life, Homicide (and its cable successor) The Wire, and 24. I was watching the end of season eight of "24". last night and even though I know he's a fictional character, I got caught up in the emotion and I found myself thinking something along the lines of: "after all he does, this is his reward; he doesn't get to win."

I suddenly realized that the sadness I was feeling for myself. Deep down, I still have a belief about myself that I don't get to 'win', whatever that means. And that belief is self-fulfilling. The reality is that I've identified a tendency towards self-sabotage a long time ago. I just didn't understand how deep the roots are for this and how it still affects me.  The way I see it, I have short/long term goals:

- I need to be able to identify when that is affecting my thinking and decision making processes.

- Figure out where it comes from and retrain myself to think differently.

This is not going to be fun, but it needs to be done.