No more shame

“I’ve thought about every word you said,” Dan told me on Friday….and the shame is gone…completely gone. I haven’t felt this light and free in years.“

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End of November I (Douglas)  spent an extended weekend high in the mountains of Colorado at a men’s retreat working through some issues.   I wasn’t sure quite what to expect as I got there, I told someone later, I felt like I was going to have a “spiritual colonoscopy”

Colon cancer runs in our family, so I’ve had the “opportunity” to be scoped on more than one occasion. Once you hit 50, it’s recommended everyone get’s one of these, but if you’re like most chickens (I mean people)  we put it off and put it off…the thing is, if you catch the polyps early it is a very treatable cancer..the problem comes when you wait….

So too, in life,  personal  issues that are ignored usually don’t  just magically go away…they tend to grow and fester…so early on in our marriage, when  I found myself completely stuck and confused,  at a point of desperation, I reached out for help.  It taught me a valuable lesson.  Why  should I  spend months (or years)  struggling with the same old crap  when an answer may be forthcoming in  a 60 minute conversation if I have the gut’s and I’m humble enough to say “I’m stuck, I have a problem…can  you help?”

This stuff was never modeled for me growing up.  I’ve had to learn it the hard way.

So, over the years in our marriage, and through the turbulent teenage years, we’ve proactively sought out help, whenever it became obvious, we were over my heads…after the 2nd or 3rd issue, it isn’t really that much different from  making an appointment to see the dentist if you have a toothache….

I am not at liberty at the present to talk about specifics..there may come a day in the not too distant future where I will write about it but not yet…    Some long standing, buried, pain has been  coming to light this Summer and Fall, and I decided to step up to the plate and deal with it head on…hence my trip to Colorado.

Most of us have painful “stuff” in  our lives no one else knows about…I don’t have to list it here…if you have it, then you know what I’m talking about.  Well, stop for just a second and try to imagine the sting of that pain being gone…not just suppressed but gone…..

After my trip to Colorado,   I  happened to tell Dan about some of the radical  emotional freedom I was  experiencing…I wasn’t  even aware of the hurts in his life…he trusted me enough to tell me his story He told me he had been having flash backs and night mares…dark shameful memories had dogged him for years…. I listened, and encouraged him…and hadn’t thought any more about our conversation..then he told me on Friday,  “I’ve thought about every word you said,”….and the shame is gone…completely gone. I haven’t felt this light and free in years.“

I have no idea who may stumble across this particular blog post at some point.  God has an amazing way of allowing people’s paths to cross in the most serendipitous fashions….anyway, if you’re reading this and are at a broken stuck place in your life and need someone to talk to…(or are not there currently but have something to add to this conversation, let me know)

Time to get moving.  Sincerely,   DM

 

It started with a look

“So who do you think are some of the hot girls in your class?” I remember asking my brother Steve one night as we were going to bed.  He was 13 and I was 14.

We never talked about that sort of thing but for some reason that night, we did.

One of the girls in his class that especially caught my eye was  the doctor’s daughter.   Long dark hair, cute smile.  friendly…

whoa…….

Yep, he agreed, she definitely needed to be on the   a ” hottie” list 

But since she was a year younger than I, and I was  shy,  (I would get tongue tied any time I found myself in the presence of a pretty girl,)

the odds of me going out on a date were slim to none.

Flash forward 2 years.

Our highschool combined the 9th through 12 grade classes into adviser groups for morning attendance.  Imagine my rush of excitement  when I realized  I’d been assigned the same group as that girl who had caught my eye as far back as 6th grade..    She didn’t have a clue as to my feelings because I couldn’t for the life of me, begin to have a simple conversation with her.

One day in study hall, that girl and her friend Mary were working on their Spanish home work.  The three of us were sitting at a round table together and one of them asked me a question…  heart beating wildly in my chest, I said something.  I’d actually had a short conversation with not one, but two pretty girls

Over the next several days I relived that  moment again and again.

I was coming upon my 16th birthday.

I   was locked  in a life and death internal battle with  a monster….

Fear

A Fear Monster

Ever hear of one of those?  Me neither

You’ll have to take my word for it, they are just as real, even though they are invisible to the naked eye.

If you ever have the misfortune to be inhabited by one, you’ll know it.

He ruled my inner world …  merciless.

The Monster of fear that ruled my life into adulthood.

I was trapped between this monster and the thought that unless I somehow escaped his grip I would spend the rest of my life single and alone….

and I didn’t want to be alone.. 

This monster guarded the door to the cave in which I lived….

and the only way out was past him.

I devised a plan.

I would call this young lady up on the phone.

Ask her if she would like to go on  a date?

a movie…

Summoning up the nerve to make that phone call took a  few days.

I can still remember the shaking of my fingers as I dialed her number….

She was home,  we talked.  Said she would go to the movie with me.

Went to the movie…

had a nice time.  Took her  home.

The next Monday at school, she came up behind me in the lunch line.

I panicked.  The Fear monster was still calling the shots.

I looked @ this girl of my dreams, mumbled something, excused myself and walked out the door of the lunch room.

She had no idea what had just happened, and wouldn’t know until years later.

We didn’t talk for the next 5 years.

I’d see her cruising around with different guys and kick myself.

After I graduated high school, my buddy Chuck and I stopped by a little pizza joint…This same girl waited on our table.

Chuck knew about my panic attack with her back in the day. Jokingly he says to me…“If you don’t ask her out, I will.”

and the rest is history….

Thirty three years, and four beautiful children later,

she is still my wife and best friend….

Today is Father’s Day 2012.

I’ve told this story before.

If you’re someone who get’s tongue tied when you’re in the presence of the opposite sex, I get it.

I totally get it.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  Some girls find that very attractive. ( and there are nice guys who find a shy girl attractive as well)

Find a friend,  get some counseling…don’t give up.

It is possible to escape the cave ruled by the Monster of Fear.

I’m living proof.

If you need help getting out, drop me a line.

I will do everything in my power to get you out.

Little Moe

Little Moe with the gimpy leg

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Rebekah tagged him  little Moe with the gimpy leg within the first couple of days after we got him. (She loves to quote lines out of old movies and said it was  from  Home Alone 2)

We’re raising 60  baby chicks this summer to butcher  in conjunction with 5 other local families.   free range and organic grain to supplement  their caloric intake.  We’ve had them now for 18 days.

While the other 59  chicks will run at the first hint of danger,  Little Moe will just stand there…..one thousand one, one thousand two… before he hobbles away,dragging his right leg behind him. burying his little body into mass of other baby chicks in the corner of the  room.

You’ve no doubt heard of the term “pecking order”.  There really is such a thing in the animal kingdom.  It comes from the chicken house.

Chickens really do establish who is the top dog (or chicken) in the flock.

Guess who’s @ the bottom of the pecking order?

Yep.

Little Moe.

I’ve always had a tender spot for the underdog  even back  in school.   While I was not low man on the pecking order,  I was certainly not at the top either.  Which in large measure why I do not  have many fond memories of my time in school.

I hated school.

It got worse once I hit 7th grade.

I can still remember  Ray, Randy, and Jeff pushing Greg out of the locker room with nothing on but his  jock strap.  Where the teacher was I have no idea.  Our locker rooms were right down the hall from the student center…

imagine  getting thrown out  into plain view of a  group of your peers with  little or nothing on…..

Another thing  the bullies  loved to do was come up behind you when you least expected it and pull your  gym shorts down.  they called it de-pants-ing…  Luckily, neither of those things ever happened to me, but I lived in constant fear of it happening from 7th grade right up until my senior year.

There was a girl in our class…Her name was Debbie Cooper. Kids called her “De-coop”    She was from a poor farm family.  She’d developed early, was somewhat over weight, wore thick horn rimmed glasses.  Gary  loved to harass Debbie…until she’d take a swing at him and then he’d laugh.

We had another girl  named Denise.  Pretty.  Transferred into our class  when we were in 6th grade.  Her mom had died and her dad was doing the best  to raise 2 girls and a boy.   I can still remember sitting in our 6th grade choir room, looking outside while another class of 6th graders were   outside for recess.  Gary  (yep, same one)  came up to Denise and pushed her down into the snow.   Where were the teachers????

Denise was shy .

All she wanted was to fit in. Somebody tagged her with the nickname “Scarecrow” ….

 

Imagine being a girl with a nick name like Scarecrow.

Want to close with  a short plug for an excellent book on this topic of bullying and emotional abuse.

Frank Peretti tells his true story  in the book he’s titled The Wounded Spirit

It is a must read for anyone who has been in the receiving end of this sort of thing.

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Getting back to little Moe.  I’ve already decided we’re going to keep him long term….

Any thoughts or experiences on this whole issue of pecking orders and bullying?

As always thanks for taking the time to read my stuff.  DM

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Update 4 hours later.…just brought my tomatoes in for the night.

I’m in the process of “hardening” them…In case you’re new to gardening,   these tomatoes were raised under a grow light in the basement and the cell structure in the plants is not strong enough to handle the wind and elements initially, so for a week or two before I finally plant them in the ground, I set them out during the day, give them a controlled exposure to the elements.

At night I bring them back inside and allow them to recover….unfortunately, a couple of the plants were really  tested today and two of them snapped in half.  My mind instantly went to this blog post about adversity and while some adversity is good for us (as Trish pointed out) making us stronger,  it is possible to  be broken long term…just like this:

Brandywine tomato plant snapped off by the wind  today

2 trays of tomatoes just in from a day of adversity.  Tray on the right doesn’t look to bad.  Tray on the left had a harder day.

Even I get conflicted once in a while ;-)

Conflicted:  Full of conflicting emotions,   A psychic struggle, often unconscious, resulting from the opposition or simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires, or tendencies.

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“We’ve got a form of brainwashing going on in our country.”  Morrie sighed. “Do you know how they brainwash people?  They repeat something over and over.  And that’s what we do in this country.  Owning things is good.  More money is good.  More property is good.  More commercialism is good.  More is good.  More is good.  We repeat it – and have it repeated to us – over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise.  The average person is so fogged up by this, he has no perspective on what’s really important anymore.”

From Tuesday’s With Morrie  page 124

I (DM) have been gnawing on  a related issue for a while now.  The value  placed on physically attractiveness , youth and beauty in our culture.    A part of me rolls my eyes at the shallow sillyness of it all, and yet there is a  small part of me that wishes I had just a little piece of that pie too.

Not the whole cake mind you, just a little slice….like a piece of cheese cake.

This thinking rears its head when I scroll through pictures of my niece on facebook.  She’s in the prime of her youth, attractive, always seeming to be getting lots of attention.  Lots of pictures where she and her friends are striking poses for the camera…you know the pose….

It also rears it’s head  in the blog world.  Young  female writers will regularly get dozens of comments  and I’m lucky if I get one or two   Now don’t take this personal any of you my regular readers…I’m not trying to whine, it’s just that in the back of my mind, I wonder if I were female, and in my 20′s how many more comments might roll in.

So here’s where the conflicted feelings come into play.   I love my privacy and my space.  I have no desire to be the center of attention in a group.  I “know” physical beauty and youthful vigor  do not last.  That stuff is an illusion. and yet in my heart of hearts, I still crave some of it.  If I didn’t this sort of stuff wouldn’t bother me.

Brittany posted  the following video clip  a couple of weeks ago on face book… It bears watching at least once a month:

A letter to my younger self

Dear Me in 1973,   I saw your picture in the flashback section of the local paper, thought I’d jot you a note.

I know this is hard to understand, but this letter is being written by yourself 38 years into the future.    The year is 2011 and you’re still fascinated with  the computer.  I’m not sure how much time I have on this end before I loose the connection, so this is going to be quick.

There are so many  things going through my mind….

That kid sitting next to you (along with all the other jocks in your class, ignore them, you’re not going to see most of them ever again except at class reunions-  And Mr J, the gym teacher-  he should never have been given a teaching position, lining you guys up to pick teams.   I know  you’re one of the last ones picked because of your size.

I know you like to take your medicine straight so here’s the deal…you still have 3 more years before you fill out.  I know you don’t want to hear that  but  by the time you are 20, you’ll be  pushing 6 ft.   And because of your job,   you’re in  better shape than most  of those guys I run into now.

One of the good things that came out of all those years of being small, shy and insecure is it has given you a tender heart for  hurting people.    I know, that doesn’t sound like something exciting at your age, but trust me, your priorities change after those crazy years of high school.

I want to tell you something that will really blow your mind…let’s talk about girls for a second.  You’ve only had one or two conversations with the fairer sex..and dude…get this… you’re only going to have one or two more until after you graduate…not to worry…the race is not always to the fastest…I’m going to tell you something that is going blow your mind….you are going to get a date with you know who ..and not only that, but you and her are going to end up having 4 kids together…yea, I know what you’re thinking…that’s OK,  I’m sitting here 35 years later still amazed myself.

What else should I tell you…stop grinding your teeth…, not sure what to do with them.  You’ve ground  1/4 inch off them at this point, and there is no easy fix for this mess.

I’m going to give you a quote I didn’t come across until my 20′s..it  has to do with your attitude..and it will radically change your life if you embrace it.:

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.  Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.  It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than success, than what other people think say or do.  It is the more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.  It will make or break a company…a church…a home.  The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.  We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.  We cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.  I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is wit you…we are in charge of our Attitudes”

                                                                     Charles R. Swindoll

Oh, oh, I need to go.  One last thing….you are way more gifted than you give yourself credit for.  I know you’re not a hugger, but I would love to wrap my arms around you, look you in the eyes and pour some of the older me into you now.

I got this idea for the  letter here

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Footnote 12/11/2011.  I (DM) noticed Brittany had tagged this post for someone, When I reread it, I felt like it was begging to be re-posted.  That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Boundaries

      You can tell a lot about a  farmer by the condition of his fences.

 

Jim and Sally.

I love spending time with Jim, he makes me laugh.  Sally, on the other hand has an energy sucking black hole in her soul. A few years ago, we agreed to host a friend of theirs in our B and B suite.  Inviting Jim and Sally over for supper so they could spend some time here talking to their guest seemed like the right thing to do.  I point-blank said, they were more than welcome to come over but- it was an adult only invitation.  It wouldn’t work to include their kids.

In the past when they’ve brought their children, the kids would run wild.  Their boys would be snooping through our kids rooms, snooping through our outbuildings, etc. etc.

Would you believe Sally brought 2 kids along  that night anyway.

And she  wonders why they don’t get more invitations to do things as a couple.

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Update 8/2/2011

I originally started writing this post July of 2010 but never published it.  It caught my eye tonight because Sally dropped by our place  this past Monday about 6 PM.  I haven’t seen her in 2  years.  Her and Jim have been separated now for a year.

As she sat at the kitchen table  this past Monday talking with my wife, the” monologue”   quickly turned to Jim and what kind of rat he was.    I tried not to pay attention, but after about 10 minutes of it, I came back into the kitchen and said,

“Here’s the deal…when I get together with Jim I won’t let him talk negative about you because you are not here to give your side of the situation…and so, the same goes for you….I know you’re hurting, but this is not the place to unload about Jim.  We’re not trained marriage counselors and I don’t want my mind poisoned toward either one of you.   That’s just the way it is.”

She said, “OK, OK…and within 5 minutes was right back at it.  

I stopped her and reminded her of what I just said…”Talk about anything else you want to talk about, but don’t talk negatively about Jim.”

15 minutes later, she was back at it again.  Again, I stopped her and repeated myself.  I don’t want to hear it.”

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There was a part of me that felt sorry for Sally.

She is definitely hurting.

She is also a master at being passive aggressive.

She was still talking when I went to bed.

I finally called our home phone from my cell phone upstairs. 

My wife answered the phone.

I told her  I needed to talk with her.

My wife was stuck and didn’t know what to do.

My wife didn’t  want to be rude.

I on the other hand have no trouble encouraging someone to leave if it’s after 9 PM on a work night

I call it setting boundaries.

g-nite

Why I didn’t want to go to my class reunion

Picture from my latest class reunion.  I’m in there somewhere…see if you can spot me

Tonight is my class reunion.

I’m looking forward to it about as much as going in to have a colonoscopy

But I’m going.

For several reasons.

Some of which you might not understand.

Couple of them you might.

“Why do you hate those years so much?” Sharon asked me when I told her I didn’t want to go….

(Sharon is a friend and  Pediatrician )

I told her :

“I was a late bloomer.

I was small, insecure,  one of the last ones picked when we chose teams in gym class.

I was so shy, I can literally count on one hand the number of conversations  I had with girls during the whole 4 yrs of high school.

I had a musical bent, 

– not a  stud on the foot ball team, so I never got any strokes as an athlete.

I hated my name.   (that is no longer the case,  but you know how it is as a kid…the other kids can come up with the meanest things, using your name as a spring-board.

Didn’t really have any close friends.  sure there were a handful of us that hung out together to party and stuff..but nobody I would say who was interested in me as a person.

So why in the world would I want to go to one of my “class reunions”???????!!!!!!!

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Here’s a portion of what Sharon told me:

“Doug, this sounds like many of the boys I take care of right now. The difference between then and now is we physicians are more aware that not going into puberty by 15 years of age, although not physically a problem, can be emotionally devastating to young men in high school.

The cruelty they go through is enormous.”

So, after 35 years, someone comes along and validates the ” inner angst” I  went through.

I am amazed I was not more scarred and messed up than I was.

Today   I am comfortable in my skin.

I love my name,

I love my ears (read this one if you haven’t already

I’ve already written about my journey out of low self esteem here so I’ll not repeat myself.

The only thing I will tell you is it is possible to reprogram your mind.

Overcoming low self worth is a learned skill.

I have learned the best way for me to deal with an issue in my life is to charge it head on.

If I ever encounter a burglar  I can pretty much guarantee you I’m going to head butt him….hard

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Comfortable In My Own Skin/ The journey continues

     

 ”There is a difference between superficial beauty and the inner beauty we all possess as unique human beings.  One is the product of the object culture, which reduces us to the things we own and the milestones we accomplish.  The other is the result of a life well lived, where our struggles and challenges make us more loveable and truly ourselves.  Inner beauty the kind you can feel and others can see, is what happens when you stop chasing false ideals and become the Real person you are meant to be.”

From the book The Velveteen Principles   A guide to becoming Real by  Toni Raiten-D’Antonio

 If a picture is worth a 100 words,  then this  clip is worth 100,000:

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     I (DM) was dumbfounded after watching that clip.  Sometimes I feel as if the whole world is chasing after a  mirage.   And then I read  the following and realize, I’m not alone….

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      “I began to formulate the Velveteen Principles in a most unlikely place.  I was at my doctor’s office for a routine checkup.  I looked up from a glossy, waiting-room magazine, which was full of images of smiling, perfect-looking people, and noticed that it was hard to tell that any of the patients around me were sick, worried or defective in any way.  well-dressed and smiling, we were all trying to look good, just like the people in my magazine.

       Then the outside door swung open and a wheelchair-bound woman in her mid-seventies entered, pushed by a man of the same age who was obviously her husband.  After stopping at the receptionist’s station, they came into the waiting area.

       She was bright-eyed but obviously quite ill.  Her hands shook, and she breathed with the help of an oxygen tank.   She wore no makeup.  Red splotches and blue veins were visible through her pale, wrinkled skin.  And her clothes were not the least bit feminine or fashionable.  She was everything I had been taught to avoid becoming- weak, unhealthy, dependent and unconcerned about the impression she made on others.

        Her husband, a white-haired man was dressed in khaki pants and a flannel shirt, was small, alert and quite fig.  He had pushed her wheelchair with relative ease and then knelt next to her.  He pushed back the sleeve of his shirt, revealing a very old tattoo of a buxom young woman maybe it was Betty Grable- and stroked his wife’s hair.  As he adjusted the plastic tubing for her oxygen supply, he spoke softly in his wife’s ear.  Whatever he said made her smile.

      As I peeked over my magazine I became strangely jealous.  Here she was, at the end of her life, physically debilitated and struggling.  But she was not shy or embarrassed.  Instead, she exuded a peaceful sense of certainty about who she was and her inherent value.  It was clear that her husband adored her and cherished every moment they spent together.  I considered his tattoo and thought of a time when he was young and probably quite obsessed with pretty women. And who knows, maybe his wife was once the girl who had fulfilled his fantasy.  But in the moment I witnessed, what he loved was the true and essential person inside the body, the invisible beauty he may not have seen in younger years.

      In the weeks after seeing that couple in the doctor’s office I struggled to understand why I had been so envious..  I had a husband who loved me.  I felt good about my work and about my two children, Amy and Elizabeth.  But I felt, deep in my heart, there was something that older woman possessed that I wanted.  It was there in her face, and in the way she interacted with her husband, but I just couldn’t name it.

     The answers we need often come at unpredictable moments and from surprising sources.  This happened to me on a summer evening as I prepared dinner.  I was in the kitchen, taking vegetables out of the refrigerator and grabbing pots and pans from the cupboard while my daughters sat together reading on the sofa in the next room.  Elizabeth, age six, was  reading to two-year-old Amy.  Amy had her favorite blanket in her hand, her best bear, Lauren, in her lap and her thumb in her mouth.  Elizabeth’s stuffed bear, Ted, was propped next to her They had reached page sixteen of The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery  Williams’s story, which was one of their favorites.

     “What is REAL asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room.  “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
      “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time not just to play with but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

     “Does it hurt?”

     “Sometimes said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.  “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

      “Does it happen all at once,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

     “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse.  “You become.  It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But those things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

     In the kitchen, I was suddenly flooded with emotion and understanding.  The Rabbit and the Skin Horse, I realized were talking about the difference between superficial beauty and the kind of Real, inner beauty that we all possess as unique human beings.  They were saying that in a life well-lived, where we are true to ourselves, all the struggles and challenges only make us more Real and more loveable.  Others can see this quality in us, and make us even more Real with their love and nurturing.

      At last I understood  my reaction to the older woman at my doctor’s office.  She was loose in the joints.  Her hair was thinning, and her clothes were shabby.  But she showed no anxiety, no shame, no worry.  She accepted herself fully.  She knew she was precious and irreplaceable.  She was Real.  She loved and accepted herself as a Real and therefore imperfect person.

      The scene at the doctor’s office was made all the more poignant by the fact that the woman’s Real value was clear to her husband as well.  To him she could never be ugly, because she was simply herself.  At a moment when anyone else might have been supremely self-conscious, he was so Real that he was almost carefree…..

      As the pages of The Velveteen Rabbit turn, the main characters teach us how to find peace that comes when we focus on what matters most in life:  love, relationships, and empathy for ourselves and others.  The Skin Horse is a wise and experienced elder who is generous with what he has learned.  The Rabbit is, like all of us, insecure and searching for his place in the world, a place he eventually finds in a rather unexpected new life….  (that was from the Introduction to The Velveteen Principles )

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 So  how about you?  

Are you comfortable in your own skin? 

 What does that look like in your life?

I’ve been on this quest since 1978 .    

As always, thanks for reading  along.   DM

       

Overcoming thoughts of Ugliness

    

       “You are one ugly Mother F&*#$%@ “  Jim B said to me  on a bus ride home from school my freshman year. 

      His comment came totally out of the blue and confirmed something I’d already thought  to myself- I was odd looking, ugly even.  I thought I  had big ears, people called me “Monkey”, I had  pop bottle wire rim glasses,  a nerdy hair cut,  hadn’t hit puberty yet, I was shy, loved to read , played trumpet in band while  my  younger brother was the athlete.     

    The fact that Jim had given voice to it only confirmed it.    He was a couple of years younger than me, one of those kids that was always getting into trouble because of his mouth.    I  proceeded to beat the tar out of him, but deep inside I knew he was right.

      When I was 22  I approached an older friend   and told her I struggled with low self-esteem and wanted help.    She was passionate about her faith,    she was a nurturer, and I instinctively sensed she might be able to help.   Those early conversations were the beginning of an emotional healing process that   rooted out 90% of the negative self talk and thoughts that used to control my life. 

       Last night as my wife and I listened to a new    CD titled  ” I Declare” by Sharon Collins, I realized I still have a  negative thought that casts a long shadow over my life.  I’m embarrassed to give voice to it but I’m betting I’m not the only one who battles with it so here goes…

I am ugly.

     What I’d really like to be doing now is telling  you a story of  how I over came  negative thoughts of ugliness  but the truth is, I’m  stuck.    

     I’ve lived long  enough to observe that real beauty (and ugliness) is as much  what we think about ourselves as anything.   

     The story of the Ugly Duckling still  resonates  with me- I feel like a  duck trapped in a swan’s body.

    Thoughts, comments, questions, suggestions?

My Journey out of Crippling Shyness

 

“The shell must break before the bird can fly. “
       – Tennyson

      Len was a carpenter on my dad’s construction  crew when I was 16.  He was in his 30′s - single, quiet, hard-working, and painfully shy.  I remember thinking to myself ,  - if I didn’t somehow  get a handle on the shyness in my life, I would turn out just like Len -  and that thought   scared the crapola  out of me ( Crapola  is Low German for Hell BTW )   ;-)

     From the 7th grade until my senior year in high school,   I can  count on one hand the number of one on one conversations I had with girls.  That is no lie-  my mind would  go blank, I would mentally freeze.

     In addition to being shy, I  struggled with low self-worth- I’m sure they are interrelated.   I thought I was ugly- my ears were too big, I hated my name, and I was a very late bloomer.   When I read the story of the Ugly Duckling, I totally see myself in that   bird.   

        Shyness does not have to be a life long curse, though I seriously doubt it will go away on its own.  

  Here are some  snippits  from my own journey out of shyness in random order:

 #1 I made a decision-  I was going to rid myself of shyness,- one way or the other. 

#2- I asked for help.  I remember asking two of my  cousins to line me up with some of their friends while I was still in the dating game.  Those first dates helped crack the shell of my shyness

#3  My growth was gradual but real.  To use a word picture- looking back it feels  like I spiraled my way out shyness: 

#4  Side note-  I am thankful for my years of shyness now- Why? 

     Two reasons- It gave me a sensitivity for people who struggle.  Secondly,  I would rather start out shy and learn how to be more confident than start out haughty and turn people off by my arrogance.

#5  I took  a class in conversational skills.    I attended a weekend workshop where we roll played things  like how to have a conversation with a stranger @ a party.  It was fun  !    Being a good conversationalist is a learned skill- what are you waiting for?

#6  I see my inner life as an ongoing personal improvement project.   I read and applied books like    “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie.   It should be mandatory reading in school.

#7  Cultivate the spiritual..   Spiritual vitality and inner confidence are  related.

#8   The battle is  won or lost in my  mind-  It had nothing to do with the size of my ears, or my name (both of which I  now appreciate)

     I’ll never be the center of attention at a party or a dance.  I don’t want to be.    That was never my desire. 

To use a word picture, life as a shy person was like listening to music on an AM radio station- vs. listening to good music through a  Bose acoustic wave…you don’t realize what you’re missing until  you have a chance to compare the two.

    How about you?  Do you wrestle with shyness?  In your case- what seems to be the reason(s)?   Do you have any tips for someone else?