Accepting reality at any cost=MENTAL HEALTH.

Retreat of silence...New Melleray Abbey
A journal entry dated June 6th

Thank you for being my teacher, Jesus. I respect and honor you. I feel rested and given wise counsel by you. I also am encouraged about my struggles with all my shame responses. I have been reading Healing The Shame That Binds You. I am encouraged because the first few steps in facing/dealing with toxic shame I've been doing: being in safe community and exposing myself. Sharing the things I believe and fear about myself. The other thing that has been encouraging is this author has put words to some of what I've been feeling: an evasive feeling that sometimes I have a hard time naming and identifying. Essentially, I catch myself in interactions with people where if I make a mistake, say something I shouldn't, or a part of me is exposed that I hate, I leave feeling so vulnerable, full of shame about who I am. I seem more concerned about what others think of me, how they view me. I am shocked by my own self; almost surprised. This makes complete sense from what the other is saying: "As toxic shame, it is an excruciatingly internal experience of unexpected exposure. It is a deep cut felt from the inside. It divides us from ourselves and from others. In toxic shame, we disown ourselves. And this disowning demads a cover-up. Toxic shame parades in many garbs and get-ups. It loves darkness and secretiveness."

"Toxic shame, the shame that binds you, is experienced as the all pervasive sense that I am flawed and defective as a human being. Toxic shame is no longer an emotion that signals our limits, it is a state of being, a core identity...toxic shame is a rupture of the self with the self. It is like internal bleeding. Exposure to one self lies at the heart of toxic shame. A shame-based person will guard against exposing her inner self to others, but more significantly, she will guard against exposing herself to herself. Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the believed failure of the self to the self."

These words give a sense of voice and validation to years of walking alongside myself. God has healed much. But I sense the root has never been pulled up; maybe pruned and hacked way back. I also sense new growth is coming back. Kind of like when trees are cut down to a stump. They aren't necessarily dead yet--the roots are still in the ground and when Spring comes again, new shoots will start popping up out of the base of the tree stump. Power and the will to survive are still in that tree. The truth is, though, that tree cannot live forever, or even very long, chopped off to a stump.

That is how I picture the current state of my soul. The old tree of toxic shame was chopped down, but its roots and old trunk are starting to make new shoots. I see this manifested in all the uprising of powerful insecurities I have been experiencing in the last 1-2 months. As well as, my eating habits have become more out of control. My overeating and emotional eating are red flags and emergency flares shot into the air. It is an addictive process that produces more shame in me and the cycle continues.

God, I ask and plead and am even willing to cooperate with you in uprooting this old tree. I long to be free of toxic shame. Expose the roots. Give me courage and faith to explore and process the roots. Give me safe people to do that with. Press me. Give me more of your Holy Spirit to receive healing and to release Resurrection power in my soul, spirit, body and mind.