"just as all beings wish to be loved, i, too, wish to be loved."

I studied the feeling of shame. Here's my deep-dive.

This week, I’ve been listening to “I’m Not A Mountain” by Sarah Kinsley, on repeat. It has been the soundtrack of my days, a guiding force through the daily acts of life. In my mind, this plays in the background, as you read through these words, today.

I am running. I know only two things: someone/something is chasing me, and I need to get away. The problem is that my feet are too heavy for the rest of me, as though they are submerged in water, and my control extends only to my upper half.

I know exactly where I want to go, but my body is resisting. The air around me is a thick, difficult thing. I can feel hands reach for me, and -

My racing heartbeat is what wakes me.

This is a recurring dream I’ve had for nearly my entire life. The scenario changes often; the stalker, the lights, the location. But the general idea remains: I am trying to get away from something that utterly terrifies me, from something that wants to hurt me.

I’ve always tried to analyze what this dream is trying to tell me. Ever since I was a child, I’ve felt that dreams are messages. Signals. I’ve had an array of dreams in my lifetime which I consider deeply spiritual.

Some dreams are easy to understand - I can sort through the visuals, colors, and ideas like I do tarot cards; I can use them to guide me and link them together into an understanding. But my most haunting dream… my most common dream… the running and running and running; I could read it in so many ways. It could mean a multitude of things.

I just don’t know.

But I’ve been reminiscing on situations and people and my reactions to things, and I realize I feel shame a lot. ‘Guilt’ is also a word I try to describe to my therapist often. I just feel guilty, whatever I’m doing. I feel so guilty, and I’m always running from that feeling.

Both words are interchangeable, I suppose. (Editors note: this is not true, actually.) But shame is the one I’d like to explore today.

With love, Amal is a creation whose purpose was to give me a place for the ideas I wanted someone to hear.

I wanted to write my deepest thoughts on the world, what it all taught (and teaches) me, and what I have experienced within it, for some stranger to hold. I’ve always felt, deeply, that I was writing to no one. So, I decided to do so with purpose. Hello, whoever you are, whoever you may be, even if you are no one at all. Here is my world, my brain, my stupidest thoughts, my most embarrassing diary entries, for you to gaze upon and read and perhaps - perhaps - learn or feel something from. Perhaps you will gain something from it.

The purpose of With Love, Amal was just to have some place where I can share my ideas and feelings with a special pen pal (you). The purpose of With Love, Amal is to create a space where whatever knowledge I’ve taken from my experiences can be documented and curated and, perhaps - perhaps! - loved, in some way.

In my last letter to you, reader, I mentioned two different people’s beliefs about me. As I read through that one again, I realized the emotions I was feeling when I wrote it were pulling apart the page.

Apologies.

Today I will circle back to the “you’re too positive” thing. It was a remark that sent fire through my veins because my whole life, I have been running from the “you’re too negative” comments I got throughout my childhood and early teens.

As a child, I felt painfully different from my peers, from my family, from even my cousins. I felt and believed that I was intrinsically other - almost alien - in all situations.

The subconscious belief of my otherness has never truly left me. It kept a section of my brain bordered off from the rest, where I kept handy a list that held everyone’s descriptions of me (I have never forgotten a person’s description of me - good or bad). And there lived a little version of myself who was constantly urging me to change into someone that fixed all the possible wrongs; she’d analyze words and compliments and complaints, write up scenarios of what to do differently or better, and announce: As of tomorrow, I will do this and fix that and then will finally be perfect - I will finally fit in.

In a video titled, Nietzsche - Overcome Shame, Become Who You Are, the narrator explores his understanding of Nietzshe’s ideas of a shameful mind - shame, he says, is a feeling that stems from the internalized belief that one's outward self falls short of an idealized version.

Because of this - a person may adopt false personas, disconnecting from their true selves, and thus hindering their ability to form genuine connections with others. Because of this, relationships formed by someone with deep (perhaps unconscious) feelings of shame become transactional and devoid of real intimacy because they are centered on power dynamics rather than love.

When someone I loved complained of my “positivity”, I was deeply hurt. I wasn’t able to put it into words back then the why, but their perspective affected me for days. When I smiled, I felt fake. When a friend asked for advice, and I tried to make them feel better, I felt like a liar because suddenly I was hyper-aware of the possibility that one could be too positive or too kind or too something.

I did not think my (believed to be) “fake” or “forced” positivity was an active change I’d made, unconsciously, years ago, nor did I understand, yet, that there was a little-me always finding excuses for why I did not belong, and grabbed onto the words and tried to fix fix fix someone’s (presumed negative) feelings about me: instead, I convinced myself it was the natural course. That I had simply gotten better at living.

And I was deeply frustrated.

After that feeling passed, I was filled with despair. Now I’m too positive? Now I’m too happy? You all hated me when I was sad. You still hate me when I’m happy?

Again - wrong.

I had changed myself to accommodate someone - actually, a collection of people - and in that change, I didn’t manage to accommodate others later on. People complained about my ‘negativity’ when I was young, so I practiced smiling more. In that sense - I hadn’t grown or changed, not really, not truly; I only kept someone’s beliefs about me too close to heart. I only changed one mask for another.

No wonder I’m always so tired.

Youtuber Heidi Priebe explains in her video, Toxic Shame: What It Is And How To Heal From It, that depression and/or anxiety are a natural result of showing up inauthentically in the world. It takes tremendous energy to show up as something other than your true self, so someone struggling with shame may be perpetually exhausted. In fact, a sign that one struggles with toxic shame is frequent, recurring depressive episodes where they retreat for a period of time, during which they build up energy to re-enter the world as their “fake” self.

Someone with toxic shame ignores their inner wisdom: which shows up as feelings such as anger, sadness, or even uncertainty.

This isn’t to say I’m a “fake” person, per se. It’s just to say that someone who struggles with shame has a fear around showing up with full authenticity.

If you are shame-bound: you are terrified of feelings, so you may decide on what you will feel in advance. Spontaneous emotions are very triggering to someone who struggles with toxic shame.

Heidi says that the solution to toxic shame begins with developing/entertaining the idea of a “neutral” self. Your history is due to you having different experiences than other people, but - at your core - you are the exact same as everybody else. All the stuff on top of it is trauma and patterns, all of which one can learn to let go of.

Let’s take a quick break, then,

Breathe in, and let the air fill your belly.

Exhale - when you are ready.

Repeat this pattern until your mind is mostly quiet.

Hold two contradicting ideas on who you are, and accept that you are allowed to be both. Accept that people’s projections of good or bad are simply that - projections of themselves and their own beliefs. They have little to do with you, most of the time.

Hold the shame you feel, accept that this feeling is shame, and let it overwhelm you, let it overtake you,

and notice how your breathing has changed. Did your face become red? Did you feel your chest tighten? Explore how shame shows up in your body.

And let it. Allow it.

As this adorable webcomic is saying: when we explore our emotions, whether they are shame or anxiety or depression, they lose a significant portion of the power they hold against us.

Another breath, when you’re ready, into your stomach. Let breathing become a full-body thing. Let it be the only thing your entire body engages in. And repeat this again and again (and perhaps again) until you feel steady.

In this world it is only you, yourself, and how you bring the two together most comfortably.

Later, perhaps, you can look into the closest mirror. There, you can watch your 24-year-old features shift into 12-year-old ones. And to your reflection, maybe you can remind yourself:

that you are an innately neutral being. You are not good or bad. You are not positive or negative. You are, at your core, neutral, just like everyone else with whom you share the world.

The trick is to believe it.

When my panic disorder developed at 14, with time, I learned that the easiest way to get someone to understand was to simply say, “I’m having a panic attack, I need somewhere quiet,” and I stuck with that - I believed, truly, that the way through things was abrupt honesty.

But this is a habit I built up to make it easier for others to handle me - it is not necessarily a habit that made my personal struggle any easier. Though the onset of my frequent panic attacks was one of the worst periods of my life, the wide-eyes and fear that people showed when it happened to me, made me think I was torturing them with my suffering. My first thought, always, was “how do I make this easier for others to bear? How do I explain this to the person watching me?”

If you’ve ever been lost in the middle of a panic attack - you may know how difficult it is to string meaningful words together in the midst of it. And yet, often, I do my best to put others’ perceptions of how I dealt with my illness first and foremost. My mental health was a burden to me, yes, but it was also a burden to others, and that thought in itself was so shameful to me - how dare I make life more difficult for those I love?

So I often did (maybe, do) my best to deal with it all alone. And when that isn’t possible, I over-extend and over-explain myself to make sure whoever was around me was at ease.

I have a problem with over-explaining. Maybe you can tell?

You see - the funny thing is - you never win if you’re always editing yourself based on who your reader is. That’s for books, for marketing, for nonalive things, not for people. You don’t have a preferred audience or a niche, you’re just a person. So long you keep adjusting to new characters in your life, you will continue to be “not good enough” for anyone. Because you are not good enough to yourself.

In a weird conundrum, you adjust yourself to please others, which keeps you perpetually displeased, and people can sense that displeasure, no matter what. Like if you wore shoes that were a size too big. Maybe people wouldn't clock it immediately, but there would still be an obvious air of discomfort. The tiniest indication that something is off.

And it’s hard to walk with shoes too big or even too small. The energy from trying to will eat you up, and you will not only be displeased but exhausted, too.

Sometimes, the way we show up in the world now is rooted in what we felt was expected from us as children.

Little Amal - who I carry with me everyday.

I learned, as a child, that I was the peacekeeper. My family survived a traumatic event I was too young to understand, and as they navigated that pain, I remained somewhat clean of it. I felt that when they argued or got overwhelmed or expressed any difficult emotion, it was up to me to cool things down.

This self-assigned role stayed with me well into adulthood: during problems or arguments or basic misunderstandings, I would insert myself: either I would fawn or people please or problem solve, whatever it is, the point is that I try and try and try. My goal has always been to keep things manageable. To make life easier for the people I love.

That doesn’t always mean that I’m any good at it.

An early memory I have is of my two older sisters fighting. I could see my mother’s face becoming red with anger. So I walked up to her, said, I love you, and she calmed drastically. She softened and things quieted and they all focused on me and how they were affecting me instead of the argument at hand. This is a pattern repeated. I often try to problem-solve even when I do not understand the full picture, even when I’m not fully educated on the subject.

Listen, the thing about me is I am always begging for peace.

I am always trying to make sure everyone is okay and pleased.

For years I have done this through balancing negative comments with compliments, or making sure my frustration is as easy as it can be to the receiver. Yes, I’m a communicator, but it is curated, always. Prepared - in some way. But that preparation denied me a right that comes with being human: expression. It denied me raw anger, for I have never been truly angry, only worried about how my anger may hurt another.

Editors note: you may replace ‘anger’ with any other emotion.

Of course, shoving emotions down/making them as tiny as possible/curating them always, means I tend to explode after long periods. That, or I completely shut down. But even when I feel I have completely let my anger take over, I still do it while tip-toeing. Even when I shut down, I apologize for it. First and foremost - the person experiencing me must be as comfortable as I can make them; they must know, even on a subconscious level, that I am worried more about them than I am about me.

I feel we often forget a vital part of our humanity, and it is that:

Emotions are connection, see. They allow you to problem solve, they open the floor up for honesty. You are safe with someone who is willing to see your emotions, to experience them with you. You are safe with yourself, when you trust your inner wisdom and trust yourself to handle whatever you’re feeling. When you believe that you are allowed to express it.

In my lifetime I have circled so many humans who were so afraid of emotion - and I come in, exploding with it all in a sense, and being confused why I couldn’t understand them.

Why did I need to understand them?

Because then I can adjust. Then I can begin the making of the mask. Sometimes we mistake that as empathy - but what it really is, is fear.

In that constant search for understanding, the constant please tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it, I am only a little girl: replaying the only role I’ve ever known, and assigning all the heavy work to myself, and myself alone.

Me, I plan my emotions in advance - just like it was described. I study them and make sure they are perfectly correct before distributing them to others. I plan every possible outcome, every possible reaction. And then, I step up to the table, I pull up my sleeves, and I waste all my energy trying to fix and make it all comfortable and good and solved and better!

Some people, they do not let the emotions surface at all. Their energy goes to the burial.

We are all broken in different ways.

Another video of Heidi’s, titled Self-Abandonment: What It Is And How To Stop Doing It, she describes self-abandonment in ways that I find are similar to those she shared on toxic shame. She claims we can counter abandoning ourselves by actively telling the truth all the time; as in, bringing your honest, true self, to the table.

Through even little white lies and ignoring the smallest really, the smallest of needs, we deny and exhaust ourselves. As we practice the habit of raw truth-telling, and through it release tension, we become more aligned with ourselves, and will learn more about who we truly are.

Chronic disconnection heightens the problem of abandonment of the self and/or shame. For example, resisting the anxiety you feel that reminds you of your 16-year-old self. In his truly life-changing video, Self-Compassion: An Antidote to Shame, therapist Christopher Germer, says that just being able to name your shame is a big step in alleviating the hold it has on you, just like being able to name any emotion helps you let go of it (See: the previous meditation I shared with you). By denying the anxiety of your teenaged self, you are telling a portion of your body to shut up and a part of you, thus, sinks in despair, and builds resentment (towards yourself!) that exhausts you.

Germer says that the opposite of mindfulness is over-identification and rumination. Theoretically, he says, self-compassion is the opposite of shame. Similar to Heidi’s ideas, Germer says that shame is associated with every psychological disorder. Even if shame doesn’t cause the problem, it is often a result.

Guilt is discussed in this video, too. See, when one feels ashamed, it is unlike guilt in the sense that guilt means I did something wrong, whereas shame means I am something wrong.

In order to hide from our shame, we may partake in “dubious” behavior - it is sometimes easier to be less present through being angry at others, or working excessively, or throwing ourselves into risky situations, than it is to actually deal with what we’re experiencing. The problem is, one cannot work with shame if we’re not present. Funnily enough, the behavior we do to distract ourselves from feelings of shame are cyclical, and create even more shame as time goes on.

What one resist, persists.

Avoiding shame is more of a problem than shame itself.

Shame is an innocent emotion, Garner says. Shame calls for kindness, a longing to be loved.

Something to say to yourself when you are feeling shameful can be: Just as all beings wish to be loved, I, too, wish to be loved. Shame, after all, is the belief that something about us is unlovable - when we look deeply at the nature of shame, we can see that we would never feel shame if we didn’t wish to be loved.

Connecting the wish to be loved opens the door to self-compassion and innocence. As we acknowledge this, we must give ourselves the compassion we need.

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I can get wrapped up in the self-help fiasco, especially in tumultuous waters like the ones I’m in now. I’ve been practicing being here, in the moment, as you may already know. On my difficult days, the knowledge I gained from truly diving into the subject of shame remained with me. It added a layer of understanding and a cushion to fall on. I could feel whatever it was and then pause and say, “Oh, okay. That’s what it is.” And then: “I’m working on it.”

What I have done is give the little-me in my head an extended vacation. She keeps coming in for work in the mornings and banging on the front door, but I tell her to go home, to get some sun, and to leave me alone.

Eventually she will learn - she is unneeded. We don't need her help anymore.

But - just like everything, it is a practiced thing.

Anyway. I’ll be here, next week. See you then?

PS: Write me back!

I began writing this letter a week in advance. In the original draft, I was exploring my dreams and trying to get a feel of why the word “shame” often comes up for me. After writing it through, I decided to watch a few videos as research - to make sure I was defining shame the correct way. What was supposed to be a quick double-check became a week-long, learning experience. I tried to mix the educational aspect with my personal life and prose. Do please tell me what you think <3

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