The Shame-Blame TwoStep

Many years ago, I apparently passed a school bus as it let kids off. A few days later, I got a letter  telling me about my infraction and warning me not to do it again.
I was a good girl (of 32) who was supposed to know what the right thing was and do it. Always.

I felt flooded with shame; self-loathing roared through me in a frenzy of Annie-badness.
Not even a little bit fun.

Sometimes when I'm gardening with my bare hands I pick up a nice wholesome dirt clod that turns out to be something else. Like cat poo. Or a critter carcass.
My response is to scream, fling it away from me,  run around and loudly announce to Barbara what just happened.

Not especially fun, but compared to those feelings of Annie-badness, which mental health people call toxic shame, handling animal business with my bare hands is almost delightful.

My impulse with both is to distance myself from them as quickly as possible

So, within seconds of reading that letter, I engaged in some truly convoluted reasoning: my driver's ed teacher-or maybe my parents!- must not have adequately taught me that law. And how was I supposed to see that stop sign on the side of the bus? It wasn't big enough. Why were kids being let out there, anyway?
I knew it was nuts.

But I was in the clutches of toxic shame: the overriding feeling of being inadequate and unworthy, and until I mastered it, the only way out was to blame someone.

The more I understood shame, the more I saw the dynamic; someone feels shame, they look to blame. Often with no awareness, at lightning speed.
I call it the Shame-Blame two-step.

A few weeks ago, I started to pass a school bus that had its stop sign out. I leaned against my car
window and felt regret and relief: regret that I had been a distracted driver and relief that I had caught myself before hurting any kids or breaking the law.
I don't know if I've mastered shame, but I've certainly learned to decline its invitations to dance.


Tune in to my next post if you want to learn the difference between nice girls and kind women!

How writing is like sexual orientation

Remember the Kinsey Scale? If you ever took a college course in Human Sexuality, you probably learned about this widely-accepted perspective on sexual orientation; On a scale of 0-6, people who are exclusively heterosexual place at 0, and people who are exclusively homosexual place at 6. Everyone else (aka most people) places somewhere in between.

I hadn't thought about the Kinsey Scale for years until last spring, when it helped me with an identity issue of another sort. I was struggling with the kind of writer I am. Some grief occurred as I concluded that my dragonfly-like temperament (flit! flit!) makes it difficult for me to write anything longer than say, fifteen pages. Furthermore, I just don't seem to want to get a book published all that much.

However, I'd fantasized about Being a Writer for years. I've always written, and got somewhat serious about it when I was 41 and sold the first story I sent out. My Being a Writer fantasies involved solitude, avoiding outside employment, and many pots of milky black tea. Along with feeling vaguely British. And making award-acceptance speeches, humbly and with gratitude. I imagined my unconscious  billowing with images and prose that, through a mysterious process, would arrange themselves into profoundly insightful fiction.

Hmph. When I began to understand that a WRITING LIFE was not necessarily the life for me, I saw my romanticized notions differently. They reminded me of how I've heard some straight women imagine lesbian relationships; Like a 24/7 slumber party with your BFF, right? With many pots of herbal tea.
I harbored that same fantasy as a baby dyke. I remember a phone call to a more experience lesbian shortly after I came out-you mean just because she's a lesbian, I asked about a new acquaintance, doesn't mean I'm going to have anything in common with her or even like her?

I eventually learned that I could have a happy lesbian life even if it never resembled the Sapphic Nirvana of Pure Empathy and Female Connection of my dreams.

Likewise, just because I am not going to have a WRITING LIFE doesn't mean I can't have a writing life.
Which brings me back to the Kinsey Scale. Writing lives can be viewed on a similar continuum.

Let's place people who never write and never want to write at "0."  Writing is not central to their lives and never will be.

At a "6" would be, say, Joyce Carol Oates. No, never mind, she's off the chart.

At a "6" are all those hardworking writers for whom writing is their central vocational identity; the primary work they think about and do, unrelated to publication.

The rest of us fall somewhere in between. (I think I'm a "4.")
And we can still drink as much tea, herbal or black, as we want.


Where do you place yourself on the Writing Scale?

If you want to be less quick to blame other people, tune in to my next post and learn how a famous dance step can help you!

Six Words that Could Change (part of your) Life!

Here are the words:
Actually, I'm happy with my plan.

I first discovered the potential magic of these words while working as an instructional assistant in a special education classroom. One student, Chris, never met a schedule, instruction, or assignment that he didn't want to change. Plus, he didn't have the impulse control to stop himself from sharing them with us. Frequently. Every day. For two years.

"Why do we have to...?" he'd ask. "I think we should..." he'd offer, "But last time we..." he'd remind us. It was constant. CON. STANT. My co-workers and I were exhausted.

We cajoled him that we were not teaching by committee. We provided positive reinforcement for non-disruptive behavior. We lost our patience.

"Todd and I can work together!" Chris announced that day last May. Chris and Todd were both smart, fun boys and I liked them a lot. And there were sooooo many reasons I didn't want them to work together.

"Actually," I said, "I'm happy with my plan. We'll stick to it." He kept trying, and I reiterated just how satisfied I was with my plan.

The real difference the six words made for me was at home.
My partner Barbara and I have been together since 1985. We have extremely different strengths, so it's been vital for us to learn from each other. Even after so long, however, I continued to bristle at her suggestions for how I could do things more efficiently, intentionally, or frugally. Kind of like how she doesn't always find my spontanaeity and absent-mindedness entirely charming. Imagine.

My co-workers and I were going to the school auction. We would meet on Queen Anne Hill and take a cab. Barbara had many ideas about how we could get to the Seattle waterfront, none of which involved a cab or paying for parking. They were fine ideas and I didn't want to do any of them. I remembered my earlier conversation with Chris.

"Actually, honey," I said "I'm happy with our plan."

"Oh," she said. She seemed a bit startled, but that ended of the conversation.

Wow! That's all it took? A simple, declarative statment? We had maybe one more exchange like that and 26 years of an uncomfortable dynamic disappeared like vapor in the wind.

Credit where credit's due, of course. Barbara is a willing and efficient learner.

Now, I wonder what six words out there might help me become less absent-minded?

If you use these six words or some other phrase that's made a difference in your life, I hope you'll let me know.



What does writing have in common with sexual orientation? Tune in to my next blog to find out!

Joining In

The stereo had to die before we'd get a new system, so twenty years after CD players hit the market, we bought one. Shortly afterward, iPods made their appearance, rendering our shiny new CD player close to obsolete.
Since I buy many of my clothes used, I am typically 2-5 years behind in fashion, but it works for me.
It follows that I wouldn't start a blog until the market was thoroughly saturated, everyone else had begun tweeting and blogs were on their way to becoming passe.
At least I'm consistent.
And a smidgen obsessed with wanting my actions to feel congruent with my values and beliefs. Until now I couldn't view my own incipient blogging as anything other than a plug for attention.
Not that attention's a bad thing. It's just that we have some history, Ms. Attention and I. Baggage if you will.
I had to introspect about this for a long time..
Today I finally understood; my best experiences with writing have been when I had something to say from my heart on a topic that was important to me. They weren't about getting attention or boosting my ego.
Sheesh. So simple. But isn't that true of most of the important lessons we learn? We can't rush them no matter how obvious they seem. Plus, they often sound like cheesy self-help platitudes. But to the person experiencing them, they can have great depth and value
In my little corner of the blogosphere, I'll write a lot about personal growth- 100% free of ego-enhancing-additives! (Okay, maybe 97%. On a good day.) My hope is that my words will be of use to a reader now and then.

Do you have someone in your life who likes to tell you how to do things, whether you want them to or not? Stay tuned for my next blog post, because I have six words that are just waiting to change your life!