This Is How by Augusten Burroughs

ass.”
    “That girl is totally out of my league.”
    ” Yeah, right. I’m the next Picasso.”
    “Maybe I’m supposed to be alone.”
    Shame says things like that. When you feel spontaneously excited by something—a new career you never thought about, a haircut you see in a magazine and want—shame is the voice that brings you “back down to earth.”
    “I can’t have that haircut. I have too round a face.”
    “Except I think you have to be really smart to have that job.”
    Shame often goes in drag as common sense. The belittling putdown that shame speaks in your ear often makes sense because you’ve likely heard it since you were a child.
    “If you keep eating, you’re going to get fat.”

IV
     
    Dealing with shame is like dealing with a cancer that’s spread. There’s no single tumor you can remove. No single insight that will cleanse you of the feeling.
    What you can do, though, is observe what that inner voice is saying. Is it kind of a nag? Kind of a bitch? Kind of a bully?
    If so, it’s not you.
    If it’s not you, it’s extra crap. And you shouldn’t step on tothe plane with stuff in your baggage that you didn’t personally pack.
    With practice—and it requires practice, like playing an instrument—you can learn to hear the off-key melody of a tape playing inside your head that somebody else put there.
    A lot of people think they believe things about themselves—not talented, too talkative, too reserved, pudgy, scrawny, average looking, not good at public speaking—because they hear a voice inside their own heads that reminds them of this “fact.” If you can pay attention every single time you are hit or stung with feeling, when you feel that weight suddenly fall inside your chest—“Oh. I forgot. I can’t sing, I’m not good at it“—stop and examine it.
    Did you put that there?
    Who did?
    Shame is a barnacle that you have to find, then scrape away. Shame is the reason you feel less than, not enough, too much ———————————.
    People shame other people because they are jealous, reminded of themselves, recognize in somebody else something they themselves have been taught to hate.
    Parents sometimes use shame to expedite obedience. Shame makes you feel bad. It makes you stop what you’re doing.

H OW TO S EE THE T RUTH B EHIND THE T RUTH
     
    S EEING THE TRUTH MEANS looking at everything for the first time, every time.
    Sometimes, the actual, rock-bottom truth about your circumstances resides behind what you assume is the truth and have never thought twice about.
    You must learn to carefully examine both your feelings and the facts and see if you can find yet another door that leads you deeper still.
    It’s simple. It’s not easy.
    Blocking your view of what is true is what you think is true—your assumptions, ingrained beliefs, fears, and needs. There can be serious consequences a part of you is not ready to accept if you lift the curtain on what you believe, only to discover the opposite is true behind it.
    I recall a woman who struggled for years with intimacy issues with her spouse. She was in therapy to try to learn why she was so uninterested in making love with her husband.They had, after all, the perfect marriage: they never fought, they were always kind to each other, she didn’t trust it at all.
    That last part just kind of slipped out in the form of a joke: “It’s too perfect to be true.”
    Later, she would learn of his own deep unhappiness in the marriage, how for the last few years of it he had spent much of his free time planning his own suicide.
    In addition, they may not have fought, but plenty about her bothered him. He’d kept a mental list over the years and was able to share some of the things on this list.
    It went on and on and on.
    Even the fact that she drank diet soda instead of something healthier bothered him and he’d made a note of it.
    Hearing this, she felt betrayed. She also knew the marriage was over.
    Because she didn’t