Shame and Relief for My Twenty Something Self

Throughout this process I have listened to and recognized the needs of the various ages that live within me – the infant, toddler, child, pre-teen, adolescent, and twenty something.  Throughout this I was aware that I wasn’t really listening so much to the “current me”.  (Well, of course I was, kinda, but often current me was not as helpful for understanding myself as my younger parts.)  What’s significant about this is that I think I got kind of stuck in my twenty something self.  Plus as I learn more about adolescence by reading Carl Pickhardt’s great blog Surviving Your Child’s Adolescence, I have come to understand that there is a late adolescence that goes until about 23-25.  Since I was so delayed in getting into adolescence, it makes sense to me that that stage would have gone even further into my twenties for me.  Since I missed so many key developmental stages as a kid, it also makes sense that I kind of just got stuck there in late adolescence because I just couldn’t fully move into adulthood without getting the things I needed out of all the stages of youth.

I say all of this to talk about shame and my twenty something self.  This morning was in bed, reflecting, cup of tea in my hands, and in a mindset where I could be compassionately with my twenty something self.  I’m in the middle of a job search now, and there have been times recently where I have been jolted out of the reality that I am not that twenty something person any more.  I should be making lots more money than she made.  I have incredible skills that were undeveloped, untested or unrefined back then.  I am really different from her.

It was making sense to me, though, that it was hard for me to see myself as different from her.  I do think that I was emotionally suspended in my twenties.  That’s what caused me to have to stop and take a look at my life these last couple of years.  I could DO all of these things and test those skills, refine them, develop them and all that in my thirties, but there was still this huge emotional intelligence piece that I was missing, that made all of these great things about me kind of moot.

That brings me back to the shame.  I was remembering this morning that my twenty something self couldn’t take some entry level jobs that she would have loved because she had to make a certain amount of money because she absolutely could not have a roommate.  I knew that I was so emotionally unprepared and unable to live with anyone else, except for someone I was romantically involved with (because there was hope that I would feel loved but that went miserably for me, too).  I remember thinking about where I would live and decided that it would be in the same complex as my boyfriend.  I was so ashamed that I couldn’t live somewhere on my own, but I now recognize that I was also so lonely that I couldn’t live in an apartment complex by myself.  I had no peers of my own in my life, just my boyfriend’s friends.  It was hell.  And the feeling I couldn’t let myself feel at that time was shame.  I also couldn’t let myself feel my loneliness because  then I would feel ashamed.  But if I had been able to feel how lonely I was, I might have been able to recognize that I needed help.  But then I was so ashamed that I couldn’t say I needed help.  This was true even though I was trying out therapists at the time.  I was so turned upside down inside.

So today it is such a relief to feel what couldn’t be felt before.  It’s nice to be able to know that there is a current me who is distinct from that twenty something self.  It’s nice from a post-traumatic stress perspective that I can distinguish that the present is distinct from my twenty something past.

My job search has helped me to confront that and solidify within me that distinction.

There’s a ton of growth that’s happening each and every day these days.  I’ve stopped trying to keep track or keep up.  It’s nice that I finally have this kind of momentum.  It’s nice to give in and just let myself be changed.  And it’s nice to pause a bit and write about a slice of what I notice happening.