Shame: Reflections from an LGBTQ+ Therapist
“Shame needs three things to grow exponentially in our lives: secrecy, silence, and judgement.”
Shame.
I don’t know about you, but when I think about shame, I sometimes have a knee-jerk reaction to the word. I experience the response in the deepest parts of who I am, and sometimes, what I experience afterward is the feeling of fear. . . .
Shame doesn’t want to be seen. It tells me it’s content hiding in the deepest parts of who I am, where it lingers and attempts to take root in my soul. It likes to do its insidious work in the dark.
Let’s be honest. Most of us know shame, whether due to familial, personal, religious, or societal expectations. However, how we come to develop a relationship with shame varies from person to person.
For some, shame starts as early as childhood. This is particularly difficult because children don’t have the words or ability to fully understand that shame doesn’t define who we are as a person, or that perhaps that shame isn’t really ours to hold; rather, it is someone else's misplaced pain and misunderstanding. We internalize it as “I am bad.”
One of my first experiences with shame was in late elementary and early middle school. I started to notice that I was “different” than my peers. Growing up in South Dakota, I didn’t have anyone around me openly reflecting the difference that I was internally experiencing.
I felt alone.
However, as I moved throughout my preteen years to early adulthood, my various life experiences — like moving to Washington state at the age of 14 — started to show me reflections of this part of myself. A majority of what I learned came from the things people would say around me in conversations and various forms of media.
The problem with these “reflections” is that they were consistently negative. I would hear comments and conversations in my church, on TV, and in my family and social groups that reinforced that what I had hidden for so long should stay that way.
I learned to develop a mask due to this shame. I mastered the art of being who I thought others wanted me to be out of fear that if they saw who I really was, they would be ashamed of me.
After all, I had learned to become ashamed of myself. So much so that in order for me to distance who I truly was from who I created, I would echo the negative sentiments that I had heard. Each time, my authentic Self felt more and more repressed. Burdened by the belief that who I was wasn’t acceptable, I was reminded over and over again — sometimes by the very people I loved most in the world — that “I was bad.”
For me, shame was found in the deepest parts of who I was and took the shape of a closet. The perfect place for secrecy, silence, and judgment.
It wasn’t until I went away to college that I decided I was tired of being two different people. It was heartbreaking . . . soul shattering, really.
There were many moments that I could feel the closet beckon for me to hide again; as much as I wanted out of that place, it was a place I had come to know very well. There was also a sense of safety when I was in there. My belief was that if I was in there, no one could hurt or see me.
The problem with that belief was that it wasn’t true. I was still hurting, and by staying in that space, I was unable to experience hope.
This hopelessness evolved into depression and anxiety. It took years for me to finally decide it wasn’t sustainable. I made the decision to intentionally learn more about my community, to learn about what other individuals were going through who were in similar positions that I was in. I started to build a community of people who reflected the beautiful things about who I was.
They became what the LGBTQ+ community calls my “Family of Choice.”
I began asking questions and having conversations with people I knew I could trust. Through all of this, I slowly started to shed light on the darkness. On the shame. This was life changing for me. Remember, shame can’t exist in the light.
After a while, I started noticing that the internal space where the shame had resided was filling with pride for who I was.
Do I still struggle sometimes? Absolutely. It turns out changing those beliefs about who we are can be extremely difficult. My hope in sharing my story with you is that if you find yourself in a closet or experiencing a different source of shame, you can begin to see a glimmer of a reflection of what is possible.
Here’s my reflection to you:
You are not alone. You are worthy of being seen, just as you are. You are not broken or bad. You are beautiful and wonderful, and I hope that you find your light and let it shine.
Here at Kimberly Keiser and Associates, we are here to help you navigate the darkness and develop your light.
One of the ways we will be supporting the LGBTQ+ community is by providing various blog posts on an array of LGBTQ+ topics over the coming months. If you would like to see something in particular, please let us know by contacting us here.
We will also be here for you when you are ready to explore the topic more in depth with a therapist. We look forward to supporting you!