Dennis Gilsdorf remembers a time when shame was his primary identity.
i·den·ti·ty
īˈdentitē/
noun
1. the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.
synonyms: | name, ID |
If you were to stop me on a street corner right now and ask me who or what I am, I would tell you that I am: white, male, middle-aged, nurturer, educator, Buddhist, husband, father, bisexual, American—to label a few. If you had asked me four years ago “Shame” would have been the best way for me to identify myself, because I had a shame-based identity, conformed to mentally fabricated ideals of what and how I should be, act, and express myself.
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Back then I was ashamed of my body, ashamed of my masculinity, ashamed of my attractions, ashamed of being me. Up until that time and as far back as I could remember I had suffered from a low-grade persistent form of depression called dysthymia. It wasn’t until I read the work of Gershen Kaufman on shame that I was able to begin to unravel the many binds of seemingly unrelated incidents that made up the foundation on which my dysthymia—and my shame identity—were built.
One of the earliest moments I remember feeling shame was when I was around 5. My family—consisting of two older brothers, my parents, and I—were pulling out of our driveway in our Chevy woodie station wagon on a hot summer afternoon. As I looked out of the window I saw our neighbor, Mr. Harrison, mowing his lawn shirtless. He had a broad muscular chest dripping in sweat and covered in a mat of thick dark hair. I was transfixed. To me he was the epitome of masculinity and the antithesis of my beer-bellied, smooth-skinned father. Being only five and not yet having mastered the intricacies of genetics I announced to my family, “When I grow up I am going to have a hairy chest just like Mr. Harrison.” To which my father exclaimed, “Good luck with that happening,” followed by roars of laughter from my older brothers and, most disconcertingly, my mother. My face turned hotter than the air outside as I slumped deep into the car seat and remained silent for the remainder of car ride. I wondered what was wrong with me that I could never be hairy (which to me equaled masculine) like Mr. Harrison.
I grew up with the Marlborough man, John Wayne, and James Sean Connery-Bond as my models of masculinity. Models I would never be able to live up to. And growing up as a child of the 60s, I had few alternative reference points.
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I can also remember about four years later when as a 9-year-old I finagled my way into having a sleepover with my neighbor and good friend Connie. I didn’t understand why it took so much prodding for this to happen. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t had sleepovers in the past. Connie’s mom agreed, but with one condition, I had to sleep up in the attic room and not on Connie’s bedroom floor as in the past. The attic room was where Connie’s college aged brother stayed when he was in town and I had never been up there before. After popsicles on the front steps and chasing fireflies around the front yard, we came inside and I headed up the narrow stair to the attic.
It was a hot summer night and before long I had stripped off all my clothes and lay naked and motionless on the bed trying to feel the slight breeze from the lone window at the attics peak. Sleep evaded me and so I turned on the bedside lamp and began to explore the room until finally landing on an old trunk. I lifted the lid and discovered a hidden treasure of Playboy magazines. I pulled out a handful and brought them back over to the bed and began devouring their content (and I don’t mean the articles). I quickly became very aroused and lost in the magnificent mystery of the adult female form. So much so that I didn’t hear Connie’s mother come up the stairs and discovering me in all my glory. To her credit she didn’t make a big deal about it. She just calmly asked me to turn out the light and go to sleep.
I was mortified, but this wasn’t shame. This was simply embarrassment mixed with a little guilt. The shame would come the next morning when I heard my mother laughing hysterically and was met with her all-knowing eyes as I entered Connie’s kitchen. My eyes fell to my feet and remained there during the long walk home—two doors down—as my mother told me quite firmly that I could no longer have sleepovers at Connie’s house because I was “getting too old to play with girls.” I felt in that moment that not only had I done something really bad, but that I was bad for having done it. Our friendship was never the same after that.
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As I grew into puberty my father’s prophecy about not having a hairy chest came true. Not only was I not hairy, I was scrawny and slight—perfect for stuffing into lockers—and the last kid anyone would want on their team. It didn’t help matters much that I didn’t care much for team sports. To this day if I ever hear an old recording of sportscaster Howard Cosell’s voice I get a migraine headache—the result of being forced to participate in the masculine ritual of watching Monday Night Football with my father as he puffed on cigars and guzzled canned beer.
I grew up with the Marlborough man, John Wayne, and James Sean Connery-Bond as my models of masculinity. Models I would never be able to live up to. And growing up as a child of the 60s, I had few alternative reference points. Like many baby-boomers I grew up in a very maternal world. My mother primarily raised me (until she died when I was 10) while my father took on the role of provider and disciplinarian. He didn’t have the time or the inclination to understand or connect with his queer, sensitive, gentle kid.
These experiences muddled together with many others are what informed my sexual and gender identity. Although these incidents may seem insubstantial on their own, the totality of their impact would become the foundation of my shame-based identity. When you grow up repeatedly unable to live up to your unrealistic ideal of being a man you withdraw and disconnect from others, men in particular.
When you grow up repeatedly unable to live up to your unrealistic ideal of being a man you withdraw and disconnect from others, men in particular.
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And when you perceive your sexual identity as being unacceptable, or worse you internalize homophobic narratives, you disconnect even further. Like all those who reside in the closet you live your life wary that someone will discover your true “identity,” so the identity you embrace is one of shame. For over forty years I truly believed that there was more inherently wrong than right with me.
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My sense of identity has come a long way since then and it has taken a lot of effort. I have worked with several therapists; undergone EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing treatments; read and studied the work of shame researchers Kaufman, Silvan S. Tomkins, Brené Brown, Charles Whitfield, and John Bradshaw; and developed a daily meditation practice. I have learned about shame scripts, shame binds, and probably the most enlightening, shame spirals—losing all sense of perspective as unrelenting internal narratives of worthlessness overcome one.
The simple act of identifying shame, naming it, and beginning to talk about it with others has helped to disempower it. My meditation practice enables me to be more mindful of my sensory experiences so that I can more quickly identify triggers before they have a chance to set a spiral in motion. Mindfulness has also helped me to see things more clearly as they truly are and less through the distorted shame filters I had fabricated years ago.
Since I have begun opening myself up to communication with other men and encouraging them to do the same, I have learned that we like a lot of different things—not just sports, cars, and boobs; that we have lots of different body types and that most of us are dissatisfied in one way or another with the type we have. I have learned that many of us struggle with living up to culturally defined stereotypes and the conflicting expectations of what it is to be man, a husband, a lover, and a parent. And I have learned that many of us wrestle with shame as part of our identity.
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“When you never open your heart to others, it is hard for them to open their hearts to you. Without this openness, we are likely to start asking ourselves if we are ‘normal’ without getting any feedback. At the same time, when we do not open our heart to others, they will usually not open their hearts to us. In that way, we never discover that others struggle with the same problems as we ourselves do. Real communication will simply prove there is nothing to be ashamed of to begin with—we are all humans.”
—Rudy Harderwijk, Writer on Buddhist ideas, http://www.viewonbuddhism.org.
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Today I am much more comfortable with the fact of being who I am. I try to live my life as openly and authentically as possible. Because of this the dark clouds of shame that once hovered over me have dissipated and I am proud to be connected to this diverse and changing world.
Photo: David Mican/Flickr
This is a wonderful, sensitive article that speaks to many of us. I am amazed at your openness and sensitivity to your own self. Thank you. I would like to hear more of what you have to share if there is any way to do that.
Thank you for your generous feedback. I hope to submit more to GMP in the future. I am honored to have been able to have a voice on this important topic.