I should point out that self harm itself is a release as in
physical self harm, you know, this is just a way to release
this toxic shame. All of these methods, all of these things are
ways of self harm and all the control things are methods of
self improvement. And one of the things to really understand is
that these trigger each other, when, when this is controlled by
shame, driven by this toxic Shame, shame makes the control
more rigidly demanding and unforgiving, and the release
more dynamic and self destructive. The more intensely
we control, the more we require the balance of release, and the
more abusively or self destructively we release, the
more intensely, we require control. These can lead to these
characteristics. I'm gonna go through these very quickly. You
can be the perfectionist, just doing everything perfectly,
super achiever. You can come quite self righteous or critical
or blaming or contemptuous patronizing, helping caretaking
or saving in men, this is common with relationships, we kind of
this is almost the nice guy stereotype. It's when people
think that their self worth is defined by how much they help
other people, they can actually get a real sense of self worth
from this by helping and caretaking. And I put saving, I
mean, people get into relationships with girls that
maybe on the best, but they have this vision that they can save
them, they can fix all their problems, they can turn them
around and make them amazing and it just it doesn't work like
that. And again, they can just be this on this side of things.
They have this image that they're the winner. And then on
the other side the release side. They have a loss of self
control. They will be an underachiever. Interestingly be
an underachiever and a super achiever at the same time, be
self centered, have emotional outbursts or denial or excuses
or be unpredictable or be a loser. You shouldn't be taking
off all of these things. By the way, because this is quite a lot
of things. Don't expect to identify with every single one
of these. I should just point that out. In the book healing
the shame that binds you. The author John Bradshaw talks about
his own eating and dieting cycle. He says I've personally
groped with this disorder for years, I go through cycles of
exercise good nutritional non sugar diets. And then usually
after months of control ate a doughnut or a piece of carrot
cake. Usually I do this while traveling It is then that my
loneliness and vulnerability are most exposed. I usually reward
myself for all the hard work I've done. Once I eat the
sweets, then the release phase starts, I start obsessing on
what I've done, I blown it now. I might as well eat some more.
I'll binge just for today and start like control tomorrow. But
tomorrow never comes the sugar craves sugar. The mental
obsessing keeps me thinking about sweets, and I'm often
running into the release cycle. This cycle usually lasts until I
start developing breasts, then I know it's time to diet, exercise
and give up sugar. Here as in all compulsive behavior, there
is no balance. It's all or nothing. And one of the
interesting things that he says is that the mental obsessing
keeps me thinking about sweets, and that's intellectualization.
So by being in your mind, and constantly thinking about either
eating or not eating, you can distract yourself from your
feelings. So what I want you to get from this is that these are
all methods of dealing with this toxic subconscious shame. These
are all ways of kind of either trying to control it, try and
give yourself hope, by improving yourself, or to release it and
kind of indulge in this lowered state. And control triggers
release and release triggers control. And, again, the things
on the control side are actually good things, a lot of them. But
when they're driven by toxic shame, they are compulsive, they
never end and they just trigger release. One of the other ways
that we can try and deal with this sense that we're not good
enough is just by disconnecting from ourself, and that's what
we're going to look at next.