Building the Deep Freeze

Many of us live life isolated, alienated, really not having any idea that there is an alternative. We find ourselves drawn to others, wanting to be part of connection, yet do not know how to be with other people, (or ourselves for that matter). For us, to be with “other” is torture. When in the presence of “others”, hyper-vigilance on our part keeps us constantly scanning for danger, of what exactly we do not know, but we know it is real, deadly and lurks among “other”. In groups, or even one on one, we painfully cannot forget ourselves. Tense, anticipating painful, shame inducing rejection, we constantly scan the “other” for signs that all is “safe”. We “manage” the perception of “other” by adapting ourselves chameleon-like to what we “think” they want to see, and usually, at least until we wake up a little and become conscious of what is transpiring, we are totally unaware that we are engaged in such an activity. This is just how life is for us. Tense, uncomfortable, dangerous. And for some of us, we KNOW that it is all our fault. For others, they are just as sure it is the world and everyone in it that is to blame. In either case, as a result of this self-condemning (or self-aggrandizing) isolation, we are always on stage when with others, desperately performing a show to save ourselves from extinction.

As I write the above, my mind flashes to movie depictions of concentration camp Jews playing orchestral pieces as they watch their fellow Jews being led off trains and into gas chambers. These musicians played the best they could, for to please their Nazi masters was to save their lives for another day, but the shame of doing so was killing them inch by inch, as was perhaps, for some of them, the internalization of the less than human status their masters gave them.

A judgemental part of myself now pops up and says in a slightly sarcastic voice, “Boy, you are being dramatic aren't you Karen?”, and I think about erasing all I have just written. But I won't, because for some of us, this blind uncomprehending terror (and/or rage), mixed with the desperate longing that we feel in the presence of “other” IS this enormous. This is exactly what it is and how we are. Not attractive for sure, not how we want to be, but neither are we “bad” or “deficient” or any other negative term one might find to describe how we might feel about ourselves way down deep.

This was certainly the way I was all the time until I began to wake up a little. I hid from everything and everybody, including myself. I lived in constant anxiety. I had no perspective, no way to step outside of what was so horrific to be able to observe the horror, the horrified self or the world it/I was embedded in. Today I believe this was true because it was simply so shameful to be this way, and my shame filled self dated from so early on, that it was just not connected in anyway with my more verbal, abstracting selves. As children, if we are shamed in someway, we are just the experience of shame, we literally become shame. We have no way within ourselves to work with and understand this experience. This must at first come from the outside, from our parents usually. But if they themselves do not know how to hold and contain and neutralize shame, they cannot teach us. When this is the case, then, as adults we can find ourselves in the unhappy situation of being ashamed that we are ashamed. Whew! Is there any way out?

Most of us at some point will try to logic our way through this. We will trot out all the things we “should” know and “be”. We know that the level of anxiety we feel around others is ridiculous. We know that this anxiety will not kill us. We know we should not let this bother us. Yet, knowing does not matter, because from a place deeper than our “logical, rational” mind, from a place inside us without words...... this danger is gospel, and we all ”know” that if we don't constantly monitor, we will be caught unawares and be destroyed. What exactly that destruction would look like, none of us are really sure. We just know that it would be the end somehow, a door into the perpetually unbearable. Folks I have talked to about this fear speak of spiraling into madness, falling into the abyss, dissolving into extinction, and being condemned to hell.

And to top things off, most of us are terrifically ashamed of this “irrational” fear, ashamed that we are as we are and cannot simply shed this anxiety, and/or bitterness, and/or depression, and/or angst, and/or rage. We are mortified that others will see how we “really” are and disapprove, which will then catapult us into exactly what we fear. What a conundrum! In our longing, we seek comfort from that which we fear, and this to us is unbearably shameful. It is the ultimate proof that we are damaged beyond all redemption, that we are weak beyond belief, that “they” are right to reject us, (as we reject ourselves), so we hide ourselves from them AND from judgemental parts of ourselves. It is an impossible situation. We become living lie. Is it any wonder that many of us eventually give up and decide it is safer to go it alone? Alone, because as horrible as it is to be alienated, it is “safer” than being with “other”. This is the entrance to the deep freeze.