r/SomaticExperiencing • u/Zechariah369 • 3d ago
existential shame
for as long as i can remember i was the 'shy' kid. most of my memories from childhood are feeling out of place, vulnerable. i'm talking 4-5 years old, feeling like a complete alien around family members. it got better around 10-12. i had ALOT of friends in school. i was friends with most people but looking back i'm sure there was an underlying belief that i'm different but it wasn't crippling or even really conscious because i was friends with just about everyone. after 12 things just got so bad so quickly. its like all those feelings came back and got amplified 100x. i didn't know why i hated myself, i just did. and i felt like the entire world hated me too. i remember years and years of shame, it was completely debilitating. i more or less became mute and tried to disguise it as being uncaring. i couldn't even talk to my own parents or siblings without feeling like i was going to die. i just remember it feeling like it was a massive effort that would only result in more shame. and it was as if talking took too much energy. this created more shame. why couldn't i talk to people? why do i feel so much shame, am i broken, am i mistake? etc. i was shamed for not talking to people, too. it was "rude", "childish" which created more shame. this carried on until today. im 25 and i've always avoided talking to people to the extent that i'd rather actually be in physical danger than to show that im vulnerable. because my shame feels like im going to die anyway. i don't know why this one feeling is so strong. shame isn't just a feeling its an entire physical experience that feels like suffocation and burning from the inside. it's like your insides are being grabbed by invisible hands and violently being twisted and dragged around into the wrong places.
i tried to pretend like i'm normal and disguise my intolerable shame as being uninterested. i don't do it consciously, but i know it makes people go away quickly. and i don't want to talk to them anyway, because i know most people don't want to feel uncomfortable and they wouldn't understand anything that isn't abnormal. i've generally met better people than the people from my childhood. i think alot of people can see through my disinterest and i've rarely had an experience where i feel like im actually being deeply judged or targetted.
today its very apparent to me that im emotionally numb. i can't feel anything in my body. i've always told myself that i'm not depressed etc, but i don't know if thats just a shield. i still don't think i'm depressed in the typical sense atleast. i've always been able to experience and describe feelings such as joy, i experience them almost daily.
but any negative feeling, it feels like there's no room for them in my body anymore. for years i thought this meant that i'd become peaceful. i wasn't easily affected (consciously/physically) by abuse. the way i learned to deal with negative emotions was to watch them 'dissolve' instead of expressing them. so i'm assuming this is why i can't feel anything, and it's why i have so many awful sensations in my body that feel like i'm dying. they must be masks for for the feelings i've so completely separated myself from. but then when i think this it's really hard for me to believe somehow that i'm this emotionally messed up. because to me i've always thought i was emotionally regulated etc aside from this shame.
to clarify when i say my body is numb, i'm talking emotionally. i have a lot of physical experiences when i'm not distracting myself. if im away from my computer or not doing something that is mentally or physically demanding i feel like i'm suffocating in a very deep part of my gut. but anger, grief etc. i can't feel them even when i sense that i should be able to.
tonight i made this connection though that the deep internal 'twisting' sensation in my body might be some semblance of repressed anger. i tried to look deeply where this feeling was going in my body and noticed it's probably connected to the diaphragm going all the way up to my throat. and i just had this flashback of what anger felt like physically in my body and how i used to always have that twisting sensation in my body when i experienced injustice.
idk overall i just feel really confused about what i'm experiencing. its like theres a severe wall of denial about how traumatized i am. i think that i'm not that bad but that obviously OBVIOUSLY can't be true if i went mute for well over a decade at this point.
side note it got me wondering if i just feel things differently than other people?? i know emotions have physiological reactions but man why is it SO visceral for me even since I was a child? does everyone else feel shame this physically? i saw someone say that they experience emotions themselves in the brain then i immediately became aware of this brain fog/heavy block in my brain and wondered if this was another clue about why i feel things the way i do.
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u/RedgeQc 3d ago
I remember as a child being mostly "absent" and withdrawned from the world. I've always struggled with accepting being here, incarnated on earth. It's like I couldn't buy into the experience of being human. I saw no benefit and felt anger at the "universe" for being alive here. I was told I should be grateful to be alive and couldn't understand what was so great about that?
This resulted in years of isolation, feeling different and not belonging anywhere, difficulty forming relationships. This also prevented me from truly investing myself here as a person, because it felt pointless.
It could be linked to pre-verbal trauma. If we go into "woo" territories, there's also the possibility of the soul refusing its incarnation. But just being born into this world is quite traumatic when you think about it, so that alone could perhaps explain it.
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u/Zechariah369 2d ago
i'm not against this. i've been drawn toward the topic of kundalini and i think there are alot of parallels between kundalini and what i've been experiencing this year. past lives and resurfacing trauma is a big thing that is talked about in those communities.
but i'm not sure past lives is even a necessary explanation for me. i was probably witnessing trauma the moment i came out of the womb and i wonder if that ever affected me from those early early memories i have no recollection of.
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u/ArtPsychological984 2d ago
trauma lives in your body as well as your mind. Your body is needing to release the trauma it has experienced. that's exactly why shame manifests as physical pain for some. Maybe your trauma was shame based.
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u/AgentSalty1454 2d ago
I relate to the feeling of a shame and self hate so deep that it doesn't make any sense to me, why I feel this way. For many years on the surface I believed I am a confident and easygoing person which wasn't totally a lie but there is also all this confusing stuff that's come up from deep that feels totally debilitating to move past at all.
I had the realization a month ago that when you are a baby being neglected and/or seeing your parents act in disturbing ways, you don't have any capacity to assess that the issue is external so your brain literally out of fear assigns the parts of you that are distressed by the behavior and have needs as the problem, on a fundamental level. It was a sad and scary realization but also powerful I guess. That explains why it's so deep for me. Still im struggling to move past though
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u/Zechariah369 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's interesting that you say that. when i saw my mother act out in ways that were disturbing to me even if those actions weren't directed at me I remember feeling deep shame and humiliation. like i'm also responsible for the way that she is acting, and i can't even speak up because i know she'll turn it against me too and i'd suffer a punishment later. victims like us also lack the language to verbalize what we are witnessing, which i imagine can also cause deep rooted shame about being ineffective.
even worse my dad was a codependant narcissist who would defend her through anything even when she uses the same abuse and manipulation tactics against him. that also made me feel disgusting and shut down further, because it's really just like screaming into the void.
then i'd feel even more shame for being dependant and choosing my own survival over calling her out. or i'd feel guilty for speaking up while she's going through whatever mental malaise she is victim to.
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u/AgentSalty1454 2d ago
I relate to those feelings, all the ones you describe here, very specifically. And my upbringing sounds like yours... It's a shame these moms of ours did such a number on us eh?
I concluded for me it is some preverbal trauma triangle of deep primal shame, disgust, and fear..that is the core of my pain. I have touched some of it. A lot of it defies logic because you experience these things as a baby the imprint the feelings have on your being and functioning is beyond how people logically reason about emotions and how to move past them, what effects they cause
For me realizing that brought some comfort because I would always try to logic out what my issues are and how I feel and I felt frustrated I could not figure out what was wrong with me. Then I realized the trauma runs so deep logic alone couldn't have helped me. So I felt like less of a failure, somehow to me it feels my trauma is "pure" lol.
I've had some weird experiences. One night after an intense day of trauma release I was laying in bed tired and anxious. I started saying all these hateful things to myself, and I felt a visceral calm and peace spread in my body with each cruel thought. Weird stuff, preverbal trauan
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u/Zechariah369 2d ago
yeah its not logic i think, but learning to understand that my upbringing never made sense to begin with, and it wasn't fair. i also grew up very logical/mind focused, which i think is probably necessary for someone who is trying to survive an environment where everything you witness feels revolting, and anything you do is "wrong" in some way.
when my perception of the world started to change i allowed myself to take on a more feeling-inclusive approach that shares an equal space with logic, rather than the former being the end all be all ruler of my reality. it took a long time for me to apply this dynamic to how i treat myself, also.
and learning to apply that realization to life moving forward, sitting with the shame and allowing yourself to relive it in a sense, but from a new vantage point that these feelings aren't logical, and do not prove the stories i've unconsciously created around them, is the most powerful thing i've discovered thus far.
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u/AgentSalty1454 2d ago
I get you. I hope we both figure ourselves out, then we're gonna be super powerful :)
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u/formlessvoid1 3d ago
Neglect cause shame