Separating Pain From Shame

In that dark room, with only me and the doctor, I stared up at the screen we were both looking at. It was ghostly, shadowy, black and white.  And there it was, half of my insides, one whole side of my ovaries and fallopian tubes, dark, black, nothing there. I kept staring, blinking my eyes, thinking something might appear. The dark seemed like it went back and on forever compared to the white figures on the opposite side. It was so odd to see it. Oddly factual. There was a moment of quiet as we both stared up at that screen, strangers moments before. Both united now in the silent surprise of what we were seeing. 

“There is still hope,” the doctor awkwardly fumbled. I appreciated the gesture, even though it was awkward.

One whole side of my reproductive organs were blocked, unable to do their job, explaining why I hadn’t been able to get pregnant. There it was. Right there. That was why.

The doctor said he was going to try to open the blocked side, the shadowy dark on the picture. I closed my eyes and felt like I would die from the pain. It was searing, I thought I might explode from the inside. We didn’t know if it worked, but I appreciated the gesture the attempt.

The doctor left and I looked up at the screen, still there in the dark little room. All by myself I took in the reality of what I was seeing.There it was. “All this time it was you,” I thought to myself as I looked at the shadowing empty side of the screen.

After I got dressed and gathered my things, I walked down the bright hall and hot tears started to run down my face as I got closer and closer to my husband in the small waiting room. It oddly had a window to the hall, and so I saw him before he saw me. 

We hugged as I cried, partly from the shock of the pain I had just endured, partly from the relief of seeing him, and mostly from the revelation of what was occurring to me.

“Damn it,” I thought. “Damn it,” I said. “All this time, all this time, I thought it was me, I thought it was my fault I couldn’t get pregnant. And all this time, all this time, there was a part of my body not even working. That dark shadowy place I saw on the screen.

As we drove home, I thought about all the things people had said to me as I had vulnerably shared my struggle:

Just relax. Have a glass of wine. Go on a vacation. It won’t happen it you’re worried. I know someone who got pregnant after they adopted and they weren’t trying anymore. Just stop trying and then it will happen. Maybe its your diet. Oh and my favorite, maybe God is trying to teach you something - and when you learn that lesson you’ll get pregnant. Maybe it is because you are doing this wrong.… Maybe you don’t have enough faith.

And all this time, all of their shaming advice had a not so subtle subtext, maybe it’s your fault. Maybe this struggle, this pain, this disappointment is caused by your failure, by something you’re lacking.

And I am sad to say, I believed them. I believed them all. Now of course I wrestled with it and appreciated my husband’s eye rolls, but I wondered. And just like a puzzle piece fitting perfectly into it’s spot I quietly accepted in my grief that my pain was my fault.

Until, until that dark room alone with the doctor and the shadowy screen above our heads. When I saw in black and white clarity something I had never even considered, something all of that unhelpful advice had never considered, there was something happening in my body. There was a whole other story, another reason entirely for what I was experiencing. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t too tense, too worried, too faithless, or unable to learn the lesson. I had a physical reason for this. Now I want to be clear here, that even if there wasn’t a physical picture, this sadness was still not my fault. And it is not yours either. People are uncomfortable with the pain of others, and in their discomfort they try to find reasons you’re suffering because it is just too scary for them that you might just be in pain. We blame people for their pain because that makes it all seem more tolerable. Now sure there are times when that is true with choices, but the majority of times, the vast majority of times we are in pain just because it is pain.

And so, the lesson of believing pain was my fault, always my fault, began to unravel with this experience. My tendency to always assume it is me was up for debate. Maybe you can relate.

When something happened in a relationship, when someone was disappointed in me, when I ….I tend to always believe it is me. I am somehow lacking.

Now, I am not referring to personal responsibility here. That is essential. 

What I am referring to is what I saw in myself and what I see in therapy all the time, that when we are in pain we often double our suffering by believing the shame story we’re told or we’re telling ourselves.

There is a developmental process that happens when we are kids where we believe everything is our fault. Kids are egocentric by nature, and in order to understand the world, without help from a grown up to sort this out, they assume pain relaionally that they see or feel is, well because of them.

And many of us, who may not have gotten what we needed, or suffered some sort of emotional trauma, have never had these shame stories questioned or unpacked. And so we come up with reasons for our pain: I am too much for people, I am not enough for them, I am too loud, too quiet, not smart, not able, something is wrong with me….These reasons were strategies as kids to understand pain. But we carry them with us into adulthood, and even make up new ones as adults.

And unquestioned, these shame stories get generalized to our painful experiences in our lives.

Let me tell you the difference between shame and guilt, so we can start to have more moments where you can see, like I did in that’s small doctor’s room what is really happening with your pain.

Shame is global, it is like a cloak that you throw over your whole being. It is very unspecific. It sounds like: you’re bad, you’re too much, you’re a failure. They won’t like you, you’re not accepted, you’re not acceptable, something is wrong with you. It is all encompassing about your identity.

Guilt on the other hand is clean. It is very specific. It sounds like: you didn’t return your library book. You were rude to your kids/spouse/friend when you were anxious and angry, go apologize.

Shame says you are bad. Guilt says you need to repair a mistake, an action.

And so, I wonder, what may you be believing or do you find yourself believing when you are in pain, or your feelings are hurt. I believed something was my fault that wasn’t…and the only evidence that it was my fault was my own shame stories and bad advice of others. Where do you need clarity, the quiet room and putting up on the screen the reality of your pain. Find someone to talk it through with. In therapy we sift. We sift out the lie from the truth. The pain, valid and hard, from the shame story. Where do you need to let your pain, your grief, your loss, your disappointment be what it is. Hard, painful, sad, and not any other thing about you or your identity.