What grows in the dark

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What grows in the Dark, Dies In the light of exposure! From an early age we were taught to experience shame and fear. It seemed very important to ourselves and our parents that we were “normal”. Any abnormal situations, or behaviors were to be kept private.

Money problems, marital problems, and illness were all matters to be discussed in private. Parents would compare their children to other children. How soon a child could walk, speak and be potty trained were very important. If a child was slow to learn any of these they could be consider not normal. There was constant pressure on children to be and act “normal”.

The desire to be “normal “, stays with us into adulthood. We feel shame when we have ideas about life that do not conform to our belief of what normal is. We feel shame about our appearance, sexuality, level of financial success, marital status and whether or not we have children.

In the day to day process of appearing normal we keep secrets. Some of us are disgusted by our secrets and along with the shame have a great fear of exposure. We feel isolated and alone and begin to believe that there is something wrong with us. We fear being judged. We fear having our secrets exposed. We begin to loath ourselves.

Human beings crave connection with other humans. As babies the only thing we want is love and connection, nothing else. When shame and fear cause us to isolate we lose that connection, we don’t feel loved and we find it very hard to experience happiness. We look for happiness outside of ourselves and we never seem to be able to get enough of anything to make us feel truly happy.

Getting honest, talking about the things that cause us shame is the only way to make us feel better. We find out that when we get vulnerable with others and open ourselves up to them they often become vulnerable with us. Many of the things that we believe are not normal, are in fact very common among others. We begin to love ourselves again when we realize that there is nothing wrong with us. We begin to love and understand others.)