Start the Shame Series from the beginning: here
For shame to really control you, I think you have to believe, somewhere deep down inside, that there is such a thing as a “fatal flaw”. Fatal as in a flaw so terrible, so universally, objectively bad, that it simply cannot be redeemed in any way. A fatal flaw is thus a theoretical action or innate trait that if revealed to the world would supposedly render you innately worthless and unlovable. The message of shame is that you may already contain such a flaw. Or at very least that you are capable of making (or failing to prevent) this kind of irredeemable mistake if you aren’t careful. This is precisely how shame inhibits us. Keeping us small, anxious, and “safe” by enforcing a careful life of conformity, people pleasing, and rule-following. All for fear that we may otherwise reveal or enact this kind of fatal flaw.
When I was 13 years old, I remember thinking, “I would rather die than be gay”. This was a very literal “fatal flaw” that I felt certain could not be redeemed and therefore would render me bad and unlovable forever. So my ego did the “safest” thing it could think of, burying the truth deep down in my subconscious until public opinion began to change. It’s worth noting, contrary to what most homophobes believe, that it wasn’t being gay itself that gave me shame. I, like everyone else, am susceptible to feel shame about any issue that is both true of me and perceived to be publicly unpopular. If having dime-sized nipples was as controversial as being gay, I would have felt just as much shame about that too. Thankfully, in time, I realized there was nothing wrong with being gay (or having freakishly small nipples). But the fear that a fatal flaw could still exist continued to haunt me. “I’d rather die than be unsuccessful”, “I’d rather die than be unattractive”, “I’d rather die than be alone”, and so on. If you can think of anything that honestly ends the sentence, “I’d rather die than be…” (that doesn’t involve like, torture or insects laying eggs in your eyeballs), then you probably believe in a fatal flaw too.
But what would happen if we accepted that there is, in fact, no such thing as a fatal flaw at all? That there is no inner truth so ugly that it could possibly render you or anyone else entirely unworthy of love. That there is no mistake so bad that it could not be redeemed in some way. This may be a difficult belief to wrap your head around, given the horrible atrocities that we humans are clearly capable of. But it also raises an idea that I think is the theoretical opposite of shame.
This radical idea is simply that as human beings we are all inherently worthy not just of love, but of unconditional love. That means no matter how badly you could possibly screw up or how fucked up you could get inside, you are still, always, and forever unquestionably worthy of that most basic and profound form of human connection.
Now, this isn’t to say that you are entitled to unconditional love from any specific person, family member, parent, partner, teacher, celebrity, pet, or deity. Or even that you will necessarily ever find unconditional love for that matter. It is simply the belief that you are at very least always worthy of it. Being loved is an amazing feeling, but it’s arguably not enough if it comes with strings attached. I suspect that every last one of us desperately craves to feel not just loved, but loved unconditionally — to feel that no matter what happens we are always still redeemable, still “good”, still “normal”, still lovable, still human like everyone else. Beyond basic survival, this urge for unconditional love might be one of the most fundamental, primal yearnings we have. And yet so few of us feel that we actually deserve it — which is shame at its very core.
Because the fact is, we invented that shit! We invented love. Or anyway, we evolved it. We evolved love because it is an instinct, like shame, that in some way must have helped us survive. And I guess it makes sense when you think about it that we would evolve a feeling of joyous, inextricable connection to other beings and to life itself, not just to survive in cooperative groups, but to make this whole being “alive” thing enjoyable at all. Prior to this lucky mutation allowing our ancestors to feel love, our long lost cousins were probably just like, “Fuck this life shit, this is no fun at all”, before leaping off a cliff or feeding themselves to a Sabertooth tiger. Love and other pleasurable emotions must have a kind of motivating power that helps keep us going.
And so, if we created love, I think we all have an undeniable birthright to feel it. I think the real problem is, like that old country song goes, we are “looking for love in all the wrong places”. Given that we are inherently social animals, we assume we need to get our love from other people. But the catch is, despite our best efforts, we can’t really control how other people feel about us. They are fickle creatures, which makes them an especially dicey place to look for unconditional love of all things. Sure, we may find lots of conditional love. As in, they will love us as long as we don’t cheat on them, or hurt them, or make less than 200K a year. But if we want true unconditional love, we need to get more creative.
Over the years, we’ve tried many novel solutions to fix this problem. For starters, we tried domesticating wild animals — canines, for example — eugenically interbreeding docile, affectionate traits into them until we had literally created “man’s best friend”. And while dogs really do seem to love us, it’s difficult to say whether it’s actually unconditional or just as long as we feed them (to say nothing of cats, who clearly disdain us). What’s more, we even went so far as to make up entire invisible friends just to love us. Jesus, for example, was arguably one such friend invented to spread unconditional love to the masses. That is until organized religion came along and added all kinds of rules and fees. So it seems that no matter how far and wide we search for this unconditional love thing, we never quite find it. And I’m not just saying this because I’m allergic to dogs (and organized religion), but I think there’s a better way.
Maybe it’s not about how much your Labradoodle wants to lick your face or the theoretical affection of God’s only son. Maybe it’s not even about how much your parents loved you. Or how much your partner loves you, or your children. Maybe it’s not about other people at all. Maybe it’s just about you.
Brené Brown, in all her wisdom, says that you cannot love anyone more than you love yourself. That goes for your partner, your children, and even puppies and kittens and that adorable baby version of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. You can’t even love baby Groot more than you already love yourself! But I think our capacity for love is even more fickle than that. I don’t think you can really appreciate or even feel love from others to a greater extent than you already love yourself. Kind of like that cheesy quote from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, “We accept the love we think we deserve.” If you don’t think you deserve unconditional love, which is essentially the same as not loving yourself unconditionally, then it probably doesn’t matter how much your parents or your partners or anyone else loves you, because you won’t actually believe it or even feel it until you learn to love yourself completely first.
I know I’m getting into pretty cheesy territory here, but I don’t think this is just feel good hippie bs. If you think about it logically, we take in the world entirely through our senses — sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing. And that sense information is then completely processed, interpreted, and assembled into a subjective reality by our sophisticated, but biased, brains. So for example, if your brain interprets colour with a warmer, more vivid bias than my own, you will literally see the world through rose-coloured glasses. Whereas, if you are clinically depressed, a chemical imbalance in your brain will force you to look at everything through a glass darkly. Likewise, I think your psychological perspectives, dogmatic beliefs, assumptions, and expectations about the world can also literally colour how you interpret the information that you take in through your senses. Even affecting how you view your relationships and feelings. Neuroscientist Anil Seth talks about this in his mind-blowing TED Talk about cognition. He says:
“Instead of perception depending largely on signals coming into the brain from the outside world, it depends as much, if not more, on perceptual predictions flowing in the opposite direction. We don’t just passively perceive the world, we actively generate it.”
So if you believe, even unconsciously, that you are not worthy of unconditional love because of some potential “fatal flaw” that may be lurking within you, how could that belief not colour the way your brain interprets the intensity and importance of the love that you allow yourself to feel? Both from yourself and others.
I know from vivid personal experience that my attitudes strongly influence the way I perceive the world. My so-called shame breakthrough literally transformed how I felt about life. The pessimism and seeming meaninglessness of my extended adolescence gave way, almost overnight, to a new kind of openness and lightness that made my life noticeably happier and less anxious. In a very real way, I affected my own reality simply by embracing a new ideology about the role shame plays in my life. And though I’ve yet to master this whole unconditional self-love thing, I can feel the profound logic of it already. What’s more, I don’t think there’s actually much difference between loving yourself unconditionally and loving everyone else unconditionally too. Given that I believe all humans are equally valuable, if I can accept that just one of us is worthy of unconditional love (me), then it’s not hard to believe that all of us must be worthy as well. If you can allow that even your darkest animal impulses and most heartbreaking potential mistakes are ultimately still redeemable, then you can see how every last one of us has the potential to be redeemable too.
If this sounds inspiring, then as with all things shame related, to fully appreciate the implications of this idea it might help to take it to an extreme. All you have to do is picture the most heinous, violent, corrupt criminal you can think of. Ideally, a real person who actually exists. And then try to find some way — any way — to redeem that person. It’s not so easy after all. When people commit horrible atrocities, we do everything we can to distance ourselves from them and their actions. We say, they must be evil, they must be mentally ill, they must be fundamentally bad people — all the things we hope and assume we are not. And yet here I am suggesting that instead, we should try to give them respect, empathy, equality, redeemability, and unassailable humanity. In short, nothing less than unconditional love. Now I think you see just how difficult this whole unconditional love thing really is. It may in fact be one of the hardest tasks imaginable. Nonetheless, I still think it’s true. We are all human after all. And we are all capable of doing terrible things under the right circumstances. But because we’re all equal and all share that same near-limitless human potential, we are also all capable of doing incredible things as well. Which means we are all capable of redeeming ourselves. Which means we are all valuable. Which means we are all unconditionally worthy of love. To quote psychologist James Gilligan, yet again:
“After thirty years of working with the most violent men our society produces, I am convinced that we do not need to give up on anyone. Even the most intractably violent people can learn to live with others in ways that are constructive rather than destructive.”
Leaving the extremes aside for now, all I’m really asking is for you to start thinking about how much you love yourself. Do you think there’s something you need to achieve before you are completely worthy of love? Do you think there’s some mistake you could make that would render you unlovable? Do you think there’s something inherently flawed about you? If so, what would it take for you to embrace that flaw? To love that flaw even? What beliefs, expectations, judgments, criticisms, and fears would you have to let go of to love yourself completely just the way you are? And what’s stopping you? The opinions of other people? How good can any relationship, belief system, or ideology possibly be if it stops you from completely loving yourself or anyone else?
Here’s a fun and awkward experiment that I tried recently with hilariously sad results. The next time you’re all alone, go into the bathroom, close the door, lock it, turn on the tap, flush the toilet, run the bath (unless there’s a drought, which there probably is). Basically just do whatever you have to do to feel completely alone, private, and safe. Look at yourself in the mirror, in the eyes. And then say, out loud, in all seriousness, “I love you”. It helps if you add your name too, like “I love you, A.J.” And by “helps”, I mean the first time I tried this it made me cringe with almost as much embarrassment as if I had just said “I love you” to a complete stranger. “I love you, stranger who’s staring at me in the bathroom…” I know this sounds crazy, but actually, take a moment to appreciate how fucked up it is that I couldn’t even say I love you to myself with a straight face! But the good news is, I’m still doing it. And every time I do it, it gets less and less embarrassing and feels more and more true. And who knows, one of these days I might actually believe it!
But then again, what if I already love myself way more than I realize? What if the problem is just that we fundamentally misunderstand what self-love is?
Like most people, I thought I needed to find unconditional love from an external source — a person, god, or animal, for example. But then I realized I really just needed it from myself — an internal source. Ironically though, instead of naturally loving myself, it felt like all of my love was itself externalized. As in, I only loved other people, animals, places, and things, all of which were outside of me. So it wasn’t that I lacked love, it just felt like my love was pointing in every direction except inward.
But then I realized, what if all of that love I have for others… is actually for me?
In the same way that we created love as a species and therefore have a birthright to feel it, I created all that love I have for others and I think I have an inherent right to share in it too! All of my love — my unconditional love for my family, my friends, my partners, even for songs, books, movies, places, moments, memories, things — all of that love is a fundamental part of me. I made that shit! It comes from within me and it works through me. So in a very real way, I am that love. In fact, no matter who or what my love is directed at, I am the one who feels it the most anyway. I am as much a beneficiary of my love as the overt “recipient” is, if not more. So maybe I don’t need to “learn” to love myself, because I already do. I just need to own it.
In this way, perhaps love was never the external emotion we thought it was. What if all the love we feel, both from others and for others, is really our own love for ourselves? We don’t get it from outside nor do we give it away. We always just have it. Everything we love is inside of us. All of our love is for us. We are love.
Just a thought.
Read Part 7: The final installment, here!
