As far back as I can remember I was that shy kid. I never really questioned why I was shy. I just was and I accepted my blushing, sweaty-palmed self-consciousness as my unalterable hypersensitive misfortunate state of experiencing. I chalked it up to bad genes and did the best I could to manage my symptoms.
As I grew older, when Life followed the routine habitual patterning that I preferred- there were no issues. All Hell only broke loose if something came up that altered my expected plans or even worse, something came up that I had yet to experience. Shyness had morphed into anxiety. I cannot count the number of times my “fight or flight” defense mechanism was triggered over things that should not have warranted triggering. I was helpless to fight against this innate programmed need to defend myself from the unknown.
Fast forward to present day Life. I am almost five years into my Spiritual Awakening and I think I am finally understanding the real root of my shyness and anxiety.
Out of all places, I saw a post on Instagram stating that shyness is related to shame. Something clicked. I sat with this idea of shyness equating to shame in my meditation sessions.
I was transported back to my very early childhood and I found myself looking back into the face of shame. When I was maybe four or five years old I remembered listening to my parents tell me that I was diagnosed with an underdeveloped bladder. This was the reason I had been suffering with not being able to hold my urine at night. It wasn’t actually my fault that I had “accidents”. Finally there was a reason why I was having such difficulty and yet, somehow it was too late. The damage had been done. The details now are somewhat scarce but I can remember feeling extreme shame for what I was going through. My parents did the best they could in managing a difficult situation, but it was inevitable that their frustration and exasperation found its way into my psyche.
In doing some reading, I found that at such a young age a child doesn’t know the difference between doing something bad and being bad. In my mind- I was bad. Shame for being bad was repeatedly drilled into my conditioning. I was made to feel as if I should have been able to control this. Why wasn’t I just getting up? I needed to be “fixed” so that everyone else wasn’t so inconvenienced by my actions. I was just a bad kid I supposed.
Through my Spiritual Awakening, I’ve come to understand how identity is formed. We are in actuality always Whole. We are the entire Universe. We are Source. We are God- if you will. I have an experiential Knowing of this Truth. It’s not a theory or a concept. It’s just What Is, because it’s what’s been experienced within a Greater Awareness beyond experiencing.
At birth this body-mind is first separated from its mother. This is our first taste of separateness. It’s not so much that we come into this world, but it’s more like we come OUT of the Universe. We grow, evolve and are conditioned by society, our family and the environment until we eventually become IDENTIFIED as this body-mind around age two or so. We finally can look into a mirror and identify ourselves as “that’s me”.
This process of identification is like a secondary level of separation. When we create the “me” we also create the other. The world of duality has become solidified in place. We learn what is good and bad. We learn what we should do and what we should avoid doing. We learn what a family means, what religion to follow, the importance of studying and learning, the goal of achieving a better life- so we’ll be happy.
For me, my initial identity included this deep shame. It was like building a skyscraper on a faulty foundation. Everything built atop the shakiness of the supporting ground would shake for me the rest of my life.
To add insult to injury, I was a very skinny and awkward kid through my early adolescent years. I was already self-conscious and filled with shame. Being teased for being skinny and awkward only added to the shame I was already feeling.
I’ve recently read up a bit on shame and one thing I found out is that we are equipped with a bit of a self-defense mechanism as we grow older. The shame buries itself within our subconscious so as to free us from carrying the shame consciously. We end up not realizing that the shame is the underlying factor that is creating our anxiety. This is why I couldn’t tie my anxiety back into childhood.
My anxiety was a projection of the shame I endured as a child. My nervous system was on perpetual red alert- looking for any possible chance of embarrassment or humiliation. My sympathetic nervous system would initiate a “fight or flight” response whenever life started to move out of my control.
I would eventually start to avoid most unfamiliar social gatherings, making up excuses as to why I could not attend. I would avoid certain roles at work that required public speaking. Things like making a phone call to someone who I didn’t know or ordering at a drive-through would be difficult because of the subconscious fear of saying the wrong thing. I could go on and on about the things that happened or the things I avoided. I had become just this existence who’s first priority was to avoid being shamed.
This epiphany about shame related anxiety was revealed to me very recently all because of the divorce that I’m now going through. Ultimately my shame and anxiety played a big part in getting divorced. Without this separation from my wife, I may never have delved this deeply into why my anxiety was preventing me from being more social.
My Awakening has brought me huge relief from my day to day anxiety, as I see the false nature of mind, but there was still an underlying lingering tendency to avoid interacting with others. I may have normalized it by considering the way a Zen hermit enjoyed his solitude, but there was still something that was “off” experientially.
About a month ago I happened upon a YouTube video describing something called Avoidant Personality disorder. Something clicked again. The word “Avoidant” hit close to home and it made me start digging deeper into this disorder.
Avoidant Personality disorder is a SHAME based anxiety that creates a very deep longing to connect with others, but at the same time creates a deep fear of humiliation and embarrassment. For almost fifty years, I had thought that I was not really very interesting to others. I would make up excuses as to why I didn’t want to socialize. I thought I didn’t know what to say. I thought I had nothing to say. I thought I would say the wrong thing. I thought I would embarrass myself with having nothing to say or saying the wrong thing. I had closed myself off to others before I could allow them to reject me- as I had been rejected as that bad kid in early childhood.
It finally made sense as to why I had been the way that I was.
I know I am not that bad kid anymore. I am shedding more and more of the very old conditioning each day. I already know this identity is an illusion of mind. There is only this Unicity of the Universe flowing as One. The idea of separateness is just an idea or you can say our separateness is really just imagination.
My shame was all imagination. I suffered within an imaginary world of mind for nearly my entire life, but that’s okay. It was ALL of this suffering with shame and anxiety that eventually led to Awakening to Truth.
With this Truth, I Realize I Am the Loving Awareness of What Is. I can look back on all the difficult experiences with fond memories. All the pain and discomfort was actually Truth guiding me to let go of the illusory identity that I had been trapped within.
To be free from identity as the individual “doer” is to finally Know True Love. If you are suffering in any way at this time just be AWARE of your thoughts, emotions, feelings, memories, difficulties, experiences, etc.
Practice Awareness throughout your day as best you can. Love arises as identity recedes.
Freedom from anxiety is not found within the experience.
Freedom is found in relaxing as the Loving Awareness of the experience.