Martin Psychotherapy Services, PLLC

Are you playing and losing?

The Shame Game:

“I should be happy but I’m not.”

You’re not happy. You know you have a great life on paper, but you don’t feel that way. So you find different ways to hide the guilt and shame– drinking too much, sabotaging relationships, blowing career opportunities, or allowing yourself to stay in terrible relationships.

“People tell me I should get over it.”

You’re having difficulty getting over “it” (whatever it is) and everyone tells you as much, but you still don’t understand it any more than anyone else. And only “crazy people” do that. So you think you just might be crazy. You keep your confusion clutched close and feel isolated because your friends and family don’t understand you while you sit with the sinking feeling that something is wrong with you.

“I should be able to stop drinking and using drugs on my own.”

If you can’t stop, then you must be weak-willed or incompetent or both. Stopping is easy because your second cousin and a celebrity online talked about how it was easy because they did it. So, what’s your problem? The problem may be you don’t know where to start. All the inspiring celebrities’ stories and listening to your great aunt talk about your cousin twice removed having 20 years without a drink isn’t helping especially when you’re hurting inside.
These are just a couple of scenarios where the shame game can be played.

How does one win at the Shame Game?

You look at what drives these messages. You revalue your values and change points of reference in order to bring about paradigm shifts. Given this insight there can be moves to attack the shame. Shame is the ship bringing its misery to your shores. You learn how to defend against it. You will still have the judge, jury and executioner of thoughts and feelings but you’ll give yourself a misdemeanor rather than life without parole. In other words, you can learn to be comfortable in your own skin. That heaviness can be lifted.

Or Are you sitting in despair?

It’s comfortable in its uneasy way. It may feel as if you’re Bill Murray in Groundhog Day but it’s not entertaining. In fact it can be downright brutal. It’s a never ending form of self-loathing. This sense of vertigo emerges and plunges you down further. This is the sense of dread day in and day out. You may feel like a rudderless ship in a storm. But for all intent purposes everyday bleeds into another.  You may have a confrontation with your own existence and have that brief profound thought something needs to change.

Yet the comfort reminds you there is no need to move. You may plunge yourself into various activities to blot out what you know to be true. The pain comes in a paradoxical way where the harder you run the more difficult it becomes. What’s true? It may be the sense of a life unfulfilled, a growing sense of meaningless and a general sense of unrelenting boredom. Maybe you look over your old social media pictures and those around you are happy. Yet you see something quite different in yourself. And it’s that moment when maybe you confront your own reality and truly decide to make some changes. Meaning is within and meaning is without but it’s there. So if you’re looking for freedom from this comfortable discomfort I can certainly help you out of it and help you forge your path forward.

Uncover what is driving these feelings and learn how to have compassion for yourself again and transcend the past.

Make an appointment today!