If you are anything like me, you may walk around feeling very different than most of the people you see around you perhaps based on your appearance, your immigration status or your sexuality. In the book “The Velvet Rage”, the gay author and psychologist, Alan Downs suggests that we can develop a deep shame about this difference that at its core can become a privately held belief that we are unlovable. He has called this belief shame-based trauma. Some of its major characteristics include chronic dissatisfaction, a lack of meaningful purpose and direction and a hyper-sensitivity to invalidation.
To compensate for our shame around feeling unlovable, we may launch into a lifetime search for approval and validation from others that ultimately fails to satisfy us. We may pursue external accomplishments, retail therapy, flashy vacations and sexual conquests, to name just a few, with no true, enduring satisfaction. Unable to satisfy our core need to feel loveable a seething anger and rage can emerge.
Alan Downs suggests that the recognition of our shame-based trauma can lead us on a path to healing. With the right supports and the gift of courage, we can develop the ability to love, authentically validate ourselves and escape the ravages of shame and rage. I am learning that this involves making important life choices, awakening positive emotions and building reciprocal relationships that truly satisfy us versus those that feed a ravenous need for approval, validation and love from others.
In addressing my own shame, I have found the stories of the late poet and author Dr. Maya Angelou to be particularly powerful. She has spoken about her own struggles with shame and her desire to heal herself and others. Here is just one of her stories.
In a humid, overcast early morning, two large, muscular black men are arguing. They hurl violent expletives, ripe with rage and rancor, with the threat of raised fists. Maya Angelou is struck by this all too common spectacle. As onlookers draw back, she draws herself in and then in between them. In a tender voice she inquires “May I speak with you?” “I don’t give a!” is lobbied back at her as a raucous response. “I understand that but may I speak with you?” she calmly interjects. Bewildered by her calm, compassionate request, they acquiesce and she proceeds.
“Do you know how important you are? Do you know that our people slept, lay spoon fashion in the filthy hatches of slave ships, in their own and in each other’s excrement and urine and menstrual flow so that you could live 200 years later? Do you know that? Do you know that our people stood on auction blocks to be bought and sold, so that you could live? When was the last time anyone told you how important you are?”
As one man falls into her arms and weeps uncontrollably, Maya Angelou wipes away his tears with her bare hands and is unaware that he is the controversial rapper Tupac Shakur. Despite being one of the most successful rappers and having a huge fan base, Tupac was feared and avoided by many. His music was rifled with blistering anger about all of the invalidation he experienced in the world around him. He was kept at a safe distance by many due to his frequent violent outbursts and had many public fights and arguments. As some of you may know he would eventually die from multiple gunshot wounds from a drive by shooting. If only for a brief moment Maya Angelou was able to release him from the undertow of shame and anger and connect him to a deep sense of worth that has been gifted to us all by those who have fought to make our lives better or even possible.
While I am not a rapper and have no designs to become one, this story is moving for me as I have been in similar fights of my own, perhaps less physical, perhaps less public, but with haunting similarities. How I wish Maya Angelou was there to intervene in so many of my own rage filled battles when my own feelings of being different, invalid and unlovable were inflamed.
I have been once again reframing that earlier story in my mind’s eye as though it involved me arguing with another gay person and a gay elder intervening. In my imagination this might be what that elder would say:
“Do you know how important you are? Do you know that our ancestors were beaten with pool cues, baseball bats and tire irons, their bones fractured, broken and reduced to powder so that you could live 200 years later? Do you know that? Do you know that our people were whipped, sentenced to life in prison, to be converted by churches, to be executed by their state, were hung from the balconies of their homes, burned alive in the center of their cities, so that you could live? When was the last time anyone told you how important you are?”
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