Shame

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Nor, in another scale of reference, is it of the slightest importance — that a woman disoriented by the vagaries of her feelings, tormented, inundated by frightening aspects of her own unrecognized selves, should like a soldier afraid of death, throw herself into the heart of the mêlée to wound those whom truly she most loved and most admired — Clea, myself, lastly Nessim. Some people are born to bring good and evil in greater measure than the rest of us — the unconscious carriers of diseases they cannot cure. I think perhaps we must study them, for it is possible that they promote creation in the very degree of the apparent corruption and confusion they spread or seek. I dare not say even now that she was stupid or unfeeling; only that she could not recognize what passed within herself (‘the camera obscura of the heart’), could not put a precise frame around the frightening image of her own meaning-lessness in the world of ordinary action. The sort of abyss which seemed to lie around her was composed of one quality — a failure of value, a failure to attach meaning which kills joy — which is itself only the internal morality of a soul which has discovered the royal road to happiness, whose nakedness does not shame itself. It is easy for me to criticize now that I see a little further into the truth of her predicament and my own. She must, I know, have been bitterly ashamed of the trick she was playing on me and the danger into which she put me. Once at the Café El Bab where we were sitting over an arak, talking, she burst into tears and kissed my hands, saying: ‘You are a good man, really a good man. And I am so sorry.’ For what? For her tears? I had been speaking about Goethe. Fool! Imbecile! I thought I had perhaps moved her by the sensibility with which I expressed myself. I gave her presents. So had Clea, so did Clea now: and the strange thing was that for the first time her taste in choosing objects of vertu deserted this most gifted and sensitive of painters. Earrings and brooches of a commonness which was truly Alexandrian! I am at a loss to understand this phenomenon, unless to love is to become besotted.… Yes.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I opened my eyes and looked at Alice - and knew at once that I shouldn’t have spoken; that I should have been as dumb and as cunning with her as with the rest of them. There was a look on her face - it was not ambiguous at all now - a look of mingled shock, and nervousness, and embarrassment or shame. I had said too much. I felt as if my admiration for Kitty Butler had lit a beacon inside me, and opening my unguarded mouth had sent a shaft of light into the darkened room, illuminating all.I had said too much - but it was that, or say nothing.Alice’s eyes held my own for a moment longer, then her lashes fluttered and fell. She didn’t speak; she only rolled away from me, and faced the wall. The weather continued very fierce that week. The sun brought trippers to Whitstable and to our Parlour, but the heat jaded their appetites. They called as often, now, for tea and lemonade, as for plaice and mackerel, and for hours at a time I would leave Mother and Alice to work the shop, and run down to the beach to ladle out cockles and crab-meat and whelks, and bread-and-butter, at Father’s stall. It was a novelty, serving teas upon the shingle; but it was also hard to stand in the sun, with the vinegar running from your wrists to your elbows, and your eyes smarting from the fumes of it. Father gave me an extra half-crown for every afternoon I worked there. I bought a hat, and a length of lavender ribbon with which to trim it, but the rest of the money I put aside: I would use it, when I had enough, to buy a season ticket for the Canterbury train.For I made my nightly trips all through that week, and sat - as Tony put it - with the Plushes, and gazed at Kitty Butler as she sang; and I never once grew tired of her. It was only, always, marvellous to step again into my little scarlet box; to gaze at the bank of faces, and the golden arch above the stage, and the velvet drapes and tassels, and the stretch of dusty floorboard with its row of lights - like open cockle shells, I always thought them - before which I would soon see Kitty stride and swagger and wave her hat ...

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  They want to do good deeds, be altruistic, and achieve something in their lives. Plus they are loyal. Once most people make a commitment to something, they don't easily renege on that commitment. When you make a commitment to a group you believe in fervently, it's a struggle to go back on your word. Later, when you begin to see things that you don't agree with, you may say to yourself, "Well, I said I was going to do this, and I was told that it was going to be hard. Now some of this doesn't seem right to me, but I said I would go along with it, and I made a commitment. So I'll stay a little bit longer." All this time, of course, the leadership and everyone else around you is telling you that you had better go along with it, in either subtle or not-so-subtle terms. Also people don't like to just stand up and say, "I quit." Rather than be quitters, they will stick with things. The longer they stay, the more difficult it is to get out. Not wanting to be seen as a quitter is yet another element that keeps people in cults. Respect for AuthorityWe were all brought up to respect authority figures, leaders, and people who give us answers. When we are young, and all through school, we're taught that there are answers and authorities. We are supposed to listen to the answers and look up to the people who "know better." As a result, when you are told not to question your cult, your rationale for obedience is that to do otherwise would be disrespectful to the all-knowing leader. After all, the leader knows better and has the all-powerful answers. Questions and doubts are discouraged. To reinforce obedience, each group usually has some kind of punishment pattern for violators. When someone questions authority, she may be made to look ridiculous or called a renegade, a spy, an agent, a nonbeliever, Satan, or whatever disparaging terms that particular group uses. Each cult's internal language always includes terms to ridicule and denigrate questioners, who are made to feel bad for doubting or questioning. If you were a questioner, eventually, in most cases, you were probably convinced by the cult's closed logic (and by peer pressure) that your questioning meant you weren't a strong believer. So you stopped questioning. Ultimately human beings do whatever they need to do to survive in a particular environment. When you're a cult member, a great deal of your environment and many of your life choices are controlled: your financial resources, access to information, the work you might do, your free time, your social circle, sometimes even your sex life is controlled. You adapt and learn to function in order to remain in the group. It's easier to conform, to go along with the flow, and to be a good believer and a good follower than it is to resist.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I could not but long for her to step upon the stage again; but I wished, too, that I might be alone when she did so - alone in my little box with the door shut fast behind me - rather than seated in the midst of a crowd of people to whom she was nothing, and who thought my particular passion for her only queer, or quaint.They had heard me sing ‘Sweethearts and Wives’ a thousand times; they had heard me tell the details of her costume, of her hair and voice; I had burned all week to have them see her, and pronounce her marvellous. Now that they were gathered here, however, gay and careless and hot and loud, I despised them. I could hardly bear for them to look upon her at all; worse still, I thought I couldn’t endure to have them look upon me, as I watched her. I had that sensation again, that there had grown a lantern or a beacon inside me. I was sure that when she stepped upon the stage it would be like putting a match to the wick, and I would flare up, golden and incandescent but somehow painfully and shamefully bright; and my family and my beau would shrink away from me, appalled.Of course, when she strode before the footlights at last, no such thing occurred. I saw Davy look my way and give a wink, and heard Father’s whisper: ‘Here’s the very gal, then, at last’; but when I glowed and sparkled it was evidently with a dark and secret flame which no one - except Alice, perhaps - looked for or saw.As I had feared, however, I felt horribly far from Miss Butler that night. Her voice was as strong, her face as lovely, as before; but I had been used to hearing the breaths she drew between the phrases, used to catching the glimmer of the limes upon her lip, the shadow of her lashes on her powdered cheek. Now I felt as though I was watching her through a pane of glass, or with my ears stopped up with wax. When she finished her set my family cheered, and Freddy stamped his feet and whistled. Davy called, ‘Stone me, if she ain’t just as wonderful as Nancy painted her!’ - then he leaned across Alice’s lap to wink and add, ‘Though not so wonderful that I’d spend a shilling a week on train tickets to come and see her every night!’ I didn’t answer him. Kitty Butler had come back for her encore, and had already drawn the rose from her lapel; but it was no comfort to me at all to know my family liked her - indeed, it made me more wretched still.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Pursewarden had been surly all evening, as he often was, and had busied himself with the drinks to the exclusion of anything else. The little ritual with Fatma seemed to free Justine from constraint; she was free to be natural, to move about with ‘that insolent unbalanced air, cursing her frock for catching in the cupboard door’, or pausing to apostrophize herself in the great spade-shaped mirror. She told us of the mask, adding sadly: ‘It sounds cheap and rather theatrical, I know. I turn my face to the wall and talk to it. I forgive myself my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me. Sometimes I rave a little and beat on the wall when I remember the follies which must seem insignificant to others or to God — if there is a God. I speak to the person I always imagine inhabiting a green and quiet place like the 23rd Psalm.’ Then coming to rest her head upon my shoulder and put her arms round me, ‘That is why so often I ask you to be a little tender with me. The edifice feels as if it had cracked up here. I need little strokes and endearments like you give Melissa; I know it is she you love. Who could love me?’ Pursewarden was not, I think, proof against the naturalness and charm of the tones in which she said this, for he went to the corner of the room and gazed at her bookshelf. The sight of his own books made him first pale and then red, though whether with shame or anger I could not tell. Turning back he seemed at first about to say something, but changed his mind. He turned back once more with an air of guilty chagrin to confront that tremendous shelf. Justine said: ‘If you wouldn’t consider it an impertinence I should so like you to autograph one for me’ but he did not reply. He stayed quite still, staring at the shelf, with his glass in his hand. Then he wheeled about and all of a sudden he appeared to have become completely drunk; he said in a fierce ringing tone: ‘The modern novel! The grumus merdae left behind by criminals upon the scene of their misdeeds.’ And quietly falling sideways, but taking care to place his glass upright on the floor he passed immediately into a profound sleep.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  trip us up. The apostle James makes sure we get this straight: “No one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone” (1:13). While there are different opinions about the meaning of Jesus’ words here, the gist of the line could be stated this way: “God, help me not fail when I am tested.” 2 We face challenging situations all the time. They might be caused by external forces, including difficult circumstances or even demonic influence. They might come from internal desires, including ones that are normal but need to be controlled, and others that are simply wrong. They test our character, faith, and determination. Put another way, they tempt us. They tempt us to act like people we don’t want to be. They tempt us to get what we want using the wrong means. They tempt us to do things that at our core we don’t want to do. They tempt us to react in ways that don’t align with our core values. They tempt us to become something other than what God has made us to be. Jesus said to pray about all that. Jesus was honest. He didn’t sugarcoat things. He made it clear that following Him would not always be easy, that temptations are real, that the “evil one” (a reference to the devil) will oppose us, and that faith in God doesn’t make all our wrong desires magically disappear. I wish it did. That would make me feel a lot better about myself. In fact, if I never struggled with temptation or sin, I might assume I was a pretty good guy, leading a pretty good life. I’d be proud of myself. I’d be arrogant. And I’d probably be a jerk. Bill Gates once said, “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” 3

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Some had been members of the cult for thirty years. All had left the group within a few months of learning of their guru's abusive sexual practices. The weekend was organized by two of the former members and was designed to be an educational experience, combining explanations of thought reform with an overview of the philosophical beliefs of their group, including its origins and fallacies of doctrine and leadership. In addition, a separate workshop was held for women who had been sexually abused by the guru. This weekend was cathartic and healing. Armed with an understanding of the dynamics of cult influence and control and the effects of the guru's manipulations and lies, the former members began to deal with their sense of failure, shame, and guilt about their time in the cult. Many chose to continue this recovery process by entering therapy and attending support meetings for former members. One advantage of exit counseling is that participants receive a short course on cults and thought reform and the opportunity to learn how their particular group or leader deviates from accepted moral practices or belief structures. They also learn the origin of the group's belief system, which may have been misinterpreted or kept hidden from them. This educational process provides them with a new understanding of their cult involvement. Armed with information and resources, and often backed up by an educated and supportive family environment, cult members are more prepared to face the decision to remain in the group or leave. If they decide to leave, they are better equipped to begin their recovery process. Evaluating Your InvolvementThe following sets of questions have proven helpful to former cult members trying to make sense of their experiences. Review these questions periodically as you travel on the road to recovery. They will lead to new insights and a deeper level of understanding. Reviewing Your Recruitment• What was going on in your life at the time you joined the group or met the person who became your abusive partner? • How and where were you approached? • What was your initial reaction to or feeling about the leader or group? • What or who first interested you in the group or leader? • Were you misled during recruitment? If so, how? • What did the group or leader promise you? Did you ever get it? • What didn't they tell you that might have influenced you not to join had you known? • Why did the group or leader want you? Understanding the Psychological Influences Used in the Group• Which techniques of influence were used by your group or leader: chanting, meditation, sleep deprivation, isolation, drugs, hypnosis, criticism, fear, other? List each one and how it served the group's purposes. • What was the most effective? The least effective? • What practices are you still following that are difficult to give up? Are you able to see any effects on you when you engage in these practices?

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  That was something I remember myself and other kids saying very often, "I'm starving." Especially if you weren't a teacher's pet. If you were one of their chums, brahmana initiated, or if you were having sex with the higher-ups, you would be okay. You would get all the food you wanted 4 Dylan Hickey was one of the people who brought the abuse out in the open. He and another former student published the V.O.I.C.E. website (Violations of ISKCON Children Exposed). The site included an analysis of the failure of the gurukula system, a collection of anonymous personal accounts of abuse, and an essay on the culpability of the group's founding guru, Srila Prabhupada, for failing to stop the abuse even though he was aware of it. The website was a searing indictment of ISKCON, made even more significant because Dylan Hickey was the son of Education Minister Jagadish. His mother was also involved in the gurukula. Dylan began writing after an accident at the Gita Nagari gurukula left him quadriplegic. Another former gurukula student, Raghunatha, started a print newsletter and published similar writings, including his own chilling essay, "Children of the Ash- ram."5 Raghunatha also helped to start annual gurukula reunions in Los Angeles. Progress in the Years 1996-1998The ISKCON hierarchy's main attempt at reconciliation happened in 1996 when the North American temple presidents and GBC members met at the ISKCON center in Alachua, Florida. Youth Minister and former gurukula student Manu Dasa led a panel discussion of ten former students to explain to the leaders what the schools were like for children. According to an editorial by ISKCON World Review publisher Kunti Devi, "Sannyasis [priests] cried. You could see the shame in some of the men's eyes. I believe it was even more than the awful threat of lawsuits that spurred these men, so committed to ISKCON, to go beyond passing resolutions."6 After hearing the,survivors' stories, the ISKCON officials acknowledged that they understood the full extent of abuse. They pledged money and resolved to form an entity to manage the funds. That marked the beginning of Children of Krishna, Inc., which was incorporated as a 5o1(c)3 nonprofit organization headquartered in Alachua. Children of Krishna helped some abuse survivors, in particular, several who spoke on the 1996 panel. However, grants could go to anyone raised in the organization, not just those who survived abuse. In addition, Children of Krishna set a limit of $2,000 per student. In my opinion, that sum is too little, considering what ISKCON took away from those children. In 1998, ISKCON formed the Office of Child Protection, headed by two ISKCON disciples who were charged with helping victims, investigating past abuse, and preventing future abuse.' In summer 1998, the two attended the Los Angeles gurukula reunion and gave out $500 to $2,000 checks to any survivor who would sign legal documents waiving additional claims against ISKCON. Many took this as an insult; some who signed off felt ashamed to take the money.

• From The Art of Memoir

  2 | The Truth Contract Twixt Writer and Reader The whole journey is toward the truth, or toward authenticity, agency, and freedom. How could it possibly help to plant a lie in the middle of it? Edward St Aubyn When I think of all the stiff pronouncements I’ve made demanding truth in memoir over the years, I’m inclined to hang my head. I sound like such a pious twit, the village vicar wagging her finger at writers pushing the limits of the form. Forgive me, I am not the art police. The wonderful thing about what comedian Stephen Colbert calls the “truthiness” of our era is that you can set any standard that blows up your coattail. Novelist Pam Houston claimed her novels are 82 percent true and ascribes that same percentage to her nonfiction —fair enough. I guess in today’s literary landscape, you can choose your own percentage. You can always hide behind the fiction label, as Truman Capote did (perhaps first) in 1966 with his “nonfiction novel,” In Cold Blood; or as Philip Roth did in 1993 with his roman à clef Operation Shylock, which he published as fiction, while claiming it was God’s own truth. (Ditto: my favorite parts of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest are more memoir than fiction.) Or you can make a general disclaimer, as John Berendt did in 1994, confessing that in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil he took “certain storytelling liberties, particularly having to do with the timing of events.” I took this to mean that he telescoped time to move the story along. In fact, the book’s murder—its central drama—occurred years before Berendt

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  In fact we don’t always know who our biological parents are. Postpartum depression and other crises from the time we were conceived or from our early life are often covered up with romantic myths. When things go wrong, secrets are born. While the first year of a baby’s life has an enormous impact on their future, exploring a patient’s infancy is especially delicate, as we rely on the narratives of others and on what they let themselves tell, know, or even remember. The secrets of infancy are unformed events that leave traces in our minds but have no narrative attached to them. They are, therefore, the skeletons of our existence. They remain hidden inside us even as they give shape to our forms. Jon and I begin with the present moment and with the little that we know: he has a baby daughter, and trauma happened in his family when he was a baby. His sister, Jane, and his baby, Jenny, are connected in ways that we don’t yet fully understand. His childhood is clouded by his sister’s death. He never stopped to think about the past and instead marched forward, as far as possible away from his history. Until the day he fell apart. Jon takes me all the way back to the beginning of his life, and I’m aware that those journeys are usually the most puzzling of all. After he leaves my office, I realize he has left a pacifier on his chair. A WEEK PASSES and I meet Jon again. “I felt good after our session,” he says. “I told Bella, my wife, that I was relieved you didn’t ask me about my breakdown. I’m ashamed that I fell apart the way I did, especially given the timing, right after we had a baby and when I needed to be strong. I wanted to be as strong as my father, who, even after my sister died, was the steady one. And here I am, instead of being a man, behaving like my mom. Or, even worse, I’m not an adult but a baby who falls apart. I felt so much shame and self-hate for that. So I guess I was happy that you let me talk about the beginning of my life instead of the...” Jon pauses. He looks troubled. “Instead of the end of your life? Is that what you were about to say?”

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  In the early 1950s there were more than 130,000 Iraqi refugees in those camps. The ma’abarot were a symbol of the discrimination against Sephardic Jews, as housing policies were weighted in favor of people of Ashkenazi European descent. Camps sometimes had only two faucets for a thousand people. The toilets had no roofs and were infested with fleas, and the ceilings often leaked when it rained. “Some people think my family was lucky,” Ben tells me, “because my grandfather found a job as the cleaning person in a local school, and they were able to move to Ramat Gan, a neighborhood on the periphery of Tel Aviv. They lived in poverty. You can imagine how bad a man felt, especially from that generation, when he couldn’t provide for his family.” Ben looks at me, searching for my understanding. After all, I’m not a man; do I know what he is talking about? Do I realize how painful it is to be a vulnerable man who has lost his power? I understand that Ben is telling me something about himself too, about his own vulnerability and tears and about the need to cover these in order to preserve not only his masculine identity but also his father’s and his grandfather’s pride. “It was humiliating for my grandfather, the head of the family, to become an immigrant with no language, no job, no status. It’s heartbreaking to think about my proud grandfather being so weak and powerless. In fact, he was never able to recover. He died with his shame, a shame about being inferior, having no respect, about speaking only Arabic, the wrong language.” At the end of each session Ben sends me a YouTube video of an Arabic song. He loves Farid El Atrash, Umm Kulthum, Fairuz, and Abdel Halim Hafez. “My parents never felt comfortable speaking Arabic,” he says. “They didn’t want to feel like immigrants. But I remember the music in my grandparents’ house, and my grandfather singing and shedding a tear. I used to look at him crying and knew that this music was filled with emotions, and I knew that it reminded him of the home he had left behind.” “Thank you for today, Doctor,” Ben writes in an email after a session. This time he shares a link to Moshe Eliyahu and his Syrian band. I am grateful for the songs Ben shares with me. He doesn’t know that, like him, I am pretty familiar with that music; that Moshe Eliyahu was my mother’s uncle, a famous singer in Syria.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  In fact we don’t always know who our biological parents are. Postpartum depression and other crises from the time we were conceived or from our early life are often covered up with romantic myths. When things go wrong, secrets are born. While the first year of a baby’s life has an enormous impact on their future, exploring a patient’s infancy is especially delicate, as we rely on the narratives of others and on what they let themselves tell, know, or even remember. The secrets of infancy are unformed events that leave traces in our minds but have no narrative attached to them. They are, therefore, the skeletons of our existence. They remain hidden inside us even as they give shape to our forms. Jon and I begin with the present moment and with the little that we know: he has a baby daughter, and trauma happened in his family when he was a baby. His sister, Jane, and his baby, Jenny, are connected in ways that we don’t yet fully understand. His childhood is clouded by his sister’s death. He never stopped to think about the past and instead marched forward, as far as possible away from his history. Until the day he fell apart. Jon takes me all the way back to the beginning of his life, and I’m aware that those journeys are usually the most puzzling of all. After he leaves my office, I realize he has left a pacifier on his chair. A week passes and I meet Jon again. “I felt good after our session,” he says. “I told Bella, my wife, that I was relieved you didn’t ask me about my breakdown. I’m ashamed that I fell apart the way I did, especially given the timing, right after we had a baby and when I needed to be strong. I wanted to be as strong as my father, who, even after my sister died, was the steady one. And here I am, instead of being a man, behaving like my mom. Or, even worse, I’m not an adult but a baby who falls apart. I felt so much shame and self-hate for that. So I guess I was happy that you let me talk about the beginning of my life instead of the…” Jon pauses. He looks troubled. “Instead of the end of your life? Is that what you were about to say?” I ask. “It feels that way,” he answers softly, not looking at me. “It feels like the end of your life,” I repeat his statement. “Yes, since Jenny was born I’ve been thinking about death,” he says.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  “No! Not like that, you idiot! What are you thinking? I can’t believe you’re kicking like that. You look like a drowning chicken. Are you kidding me? Swim like that and everyone will laugh at you.” You look, horrified. A coach is standing over a kid bobbing in the water. The kid starts to cry, tears slowly filling the inside of her goggles. “Don’t bother coming back next week,” snorts the coach. “These other kids don’t want you here, anyway.” You’re aghast. You look around to see if anyone else is witnessing this. Doesn’t this count as child abuse? You make a mental note not to let your kid within a mile of this guy. While you’re thinking about what to tell the front desk, another lesson starts in the pool, just a few feet from where you’re standing. The kids are working on kicking, just like the other group. While most of the kids happily kick away, the water churning behind them, one kid is struggling; his legs slap the water haphazardly. “Hey, buddy,” says the coach. “You’re working so hard—nice job. Tell you what—try keeping your legs straight; you want the kick to come from your hips, not your knee. Then your whole leg will help you kick and you’ll go superfast! Can I see you try?… Good, you’re almost there. Try it again.… Nice—keep practicing and you’ll be faster than a fish! High five.” Okay, let’s bring ourselves back to dry land, metaphorically. Which coach will make his kids better swimmers? Duh, the second one. But why? Why doesn’t the harsh approach work? What effect does the criticism have? Does it motivate? No, of course not. Have you ever been yelled at by a parent, teacher, or boss and thought, Wow, they really have a point. I’ll definitely try harder next time. Thanks for showing me the error of my ways!? No way, unless your sarcasm was so acidic it could eat through the floor. Instead, harsh criticism does two things to the first kid: first it shames, which is bad enough, but it also makes her not ever want to try again, which robs her of the opportunity to learn. That first kid’s parents will find her goggles in the trash tonight, I guarantee. She’ll tell them she hates swimming and doesn’t want to go back. She’ll dig in her heels and cry when they try to get her in the car next week. Not to mention she’ll lie in bed tonight imagining all the ways the coach could die a grisly, humiliating death.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Don’t get me wrong. Perfectionism confers some magical superpowers like high standards, strong work ethic, reliability, and deep care of others. But gone awry, it can subject us to a powerful riptide of I should do more, do better, be more, be better. We might look like we’re hitting it out of the park, but we feel like we’re striking out. For those of us who struggle with it, perfectionism is a misnomer: it’s not about striving to be perfect. Instead, it’s about never feeling good enough. * * * Interestingly, at the heart of perfectionism is something downright magical: conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is the least sexy superpower. Detail-oriented super vision! Single-handedly crush the marshmallow test! Clear the highest standards in a single bound! But it is the most potent trait for a good life. Dr. Angela Duckworth, author of the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, and three colleagues examined almost ten thousand American adults and identified conscientiousness as the most consistent predictor of both objective and subjective success—it plays a role in everything from income to happiness to life satisfaction. Conscientiousness is deeply rooted; the word dates from the 1600s and distills down to conscience, our inner sense of right and wrong. It means caring deeply—caring about doing things right, caring about doing a good job, caring about being a good person. We care deeply about, and for, those around us. But at some point, conscientiousness can tip over into unhelpful perfectionism. Trailblazing Oxford University colleagues Drs. Roz Shafran, Zafra Cooper, and Christopher Fairburn* posit that clinical levels of unhelpful perfectionism emerge when we keep pushing despite adverse consequences; we keep hammering away at the nail long after we’ve smashed our thumb. Two core elements lie at the heart of clinical perfectionism, both of which made my eyebrows shoot up in recognition. First is a hypercritical relationship with oneself. We are our own worst critics. We focus on flaws rather than what’s going well, what is lacking rather than what’s good. When we don’t fulfill those high expectations for ourselves, we are hard on ourselves, but when we do, we decide the expectations were insufficiently demanding in the first place.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  “My mother told me that and started crying again. She thought it was the meanest thing one could do to a girl. She thought it was crazy. She told me that when she was about my age and got her period for the first time, my grandmother took her to the barber and without further explanation had her hair cut short. She remembered looking in the mirror and the tears running down her cheeks. ‘I look like a boy,’ she sobbed. “‘Why did she do that?’ I asked, but my mother didn’t answer. I asked again, ‘Mom, why did Grandma do that to you when you were my age?’ “‘Sometimes it’s hard to understand Grandma,’ my mother answered. ‘She brought strange traditions from her country, from her own childhood, who knows.’” Lara and I are silent. I wonder if she has the same thought I have. Does she realize that her grandmother was trying to protect her daughter by making her look like a boy and not a girl? Did she try to protect her daughter, and now her granddaughter, from sexual abuse? No one wanted to know. No one ever asked. I remain silent, asking myself if Lara is ready to question her family history. Our wish to know everything about our parents is a myth. Children are in fact often ambivalent about learning too much about their parents. They don’t want to know about their parents’ sexuality and often try to avoid knowing intimate things from their history. “I need to know what really happened,” Lara says decisively and points her finger at the girl in the picture. The girl in the picture smiles a fake smile. “My grandmother,” she says, touching her long straight hair, “was always so protective of me. She accused Ethan of abusing me, but then after my parents got divorced that was all forgotten. No one talked about it anymore. That was strange.” Lara looks severe. She suddenly seems much older than her twenty-nine years. She takes a brief glimpse at her watch, calculating how long we have until the end of the session. I know she needs time to think through her history. “When I lived with my grandmother she used to scare me,” she says. “She used to repeat that I had to be careful. She would tell me strange things, for instance, that I needed to wear underwear to bed, otherwise worms would get into my vagina. She would whisper it and I remember feeling nauseous. Every time she talked about my body she would start whispering. When it came to sex her boundaries were strange. She talked about inappropriate things as if they were normal and about normal things as if they were perverse. Her whispering made me feel dirty, as if she had dark secrets that came out at night, and then in the morning she would be my loving grandmother again.”

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  But the real reason, and I know this sounds awful, is that I would rather have a child who doesn’t carry my genes. It’s probably better for her.” I ask her to tell me more. “Why wouldn’t you want her to have your genes?” “I come from pain,” Alice says. “It’s in our DNA. Bad luck and trauma. My mother had the most painful childhood, like a bad movie. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was around eight years old, and her mother died on the way. They had to carry her mother’s body until they got to a place where they could bury her. My mother was probably sexually abused by her grandfather but no one in my family talks about that. You see, when I say trauma, I mean real trauma. I have never been in therapy before. My mother has never been in therapy either.” “So you are here for both of you,” I say. “Exactly,” Alice answers. “Maybe if she could have stopped this cycle of misery, I wouldn’t be so worried about raising another miserable woman-to-be. The last thing I want is to have a daughter who inherits the bad luck I inherited from my mother.” “Another miserable woman,” I repeat her words . “Exactly,” she says. “My mother would never admit she is miserable. That’s why she became a hippie, if you know what I mean. She always has a smile on her face. She believes that we should focus on our own healing and spiritual journeys. Meanwhile, she was never happy. She had a traumatic childhood, two failed marriages, a failed career. When I was a child, she was at home with me all day. She used to say how much she loved it, and that she brushed my hair so many times, she became an expert in brushing hair. I always had long curly hair that was hard to brush and I hated it when she said that. I sensed her resentment. I remember one day at a school gathering, the parents were asked to introduce themselves. My mother, with a sweet smile on her face, announced, ‘I’m Alice’s mom and I’m a professional hair brusher.’ I wanted to die.” Alice looks at me to make sure I recognize her mother’s hidden bitterness and especially the ways it was concealed behind a smile. “Meanwhile, every time she could disappear for a few days she would. She would leave my stepbrother and me with my stepdad and go on retreats. When she came back home, she’d sleep with my little brother. For years I believed that she was putting him to bed and falling asleep there because she was tired, but as I grew up I realized that she just didn’t want to sleep in bed with my stepdad,” Alice says. “My mother never admitted that she didn’t really love my stepdad, that he was a compromise.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  “They say that money isn’t important,” Alice continues, sounding upset again, “but have you noticed that the people who say this are usually the ones with money? Money is in fact very important when you need it and don’t have it.” I think about the open way Alice talks about money. Sex and money are two topics that people usually try to avoid, not only in their lives, but in therapy too. Those subjects are filled with hypocrisy and dishonesty, and therefore they’re a good place to hide other feelings and needs that people are uncomfortable expressing. Any unwelcome feeling can be expressed through sex or money: aggression, hostility, the need for domination and power, as well as fragility, narcissism, and trauma. Sex, for example, can be seen as lovemaking even in cases where it is a way to express hostility. Like money, sex can be used to control others, to compensate for emotional insecurities, and to express or hide pain. Avoiding talking about money and sex allows us to disguise any negative feelings. In therapy, for example, negative feelings toward the therapist could be expressed in delayed payments. When we are too embarrassed to talk about money, we might miss the opportunity to reveal and process feelings that the patient wants to hide. Alice talks about the cost of the reproductive process and explores her feelings about everything she might not be able to afford, financially but also emotionally. The enormous economic burden is part of a broader weight of self-doubt and shame that she carries. When reproduction involves such transactional or medicalized aspects—when it happens away from the couple’s bed—it often breaks the romantic fantasy of a baby born “out of love.” Difficulty getting pregnant can bring to life, in different ways, intense shame, and evoke the darkest fears and feelings about being damaged, cursed, rotten, broken, or bad. It is a profound injury that touches an essential insecurity about one’s body and existence. Like many people, Alice struggles with the feelings that her inability to get pregnant might be a sign that she is not supposed to have a baby, that she doesn’t deserve it, and that she won’t be a good mother. She tries to push those painful feelings aside. She sees herself as damaged with bad genes and defends against her disappointment. While disappointed in herself, she is preoccupied with the ways she disappoints others, especially, as I come to learn, the surrogate mother.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  My parents, as well as Ben’s parents, were part of the 1950s wave of Sephardic Jewish immigration. They came from a different culture; they spoke Arabic and were considered uneducated and even primitive. The traumatized white European hegemony discriminated against those immigrants and treated them as an inferior minority group. They lived in poverty and carried a great deal of shame not only in response to their lack of resources and their difficulty in adapting to the new culture, but also in being considered ill-mannered and culturally vile. They spoke the “wrong” language, listened to the “wrong” music, and brought with them a non-European culture and practices that were unacceptable and even threatening to the Zionist white privileged authority. In order to become assimilated into Israeli culture, all immigrants had to speak Hebrew; Yiddish and Arabic were not acceptable. The Sephardic immigrants were asked to change their names to Israeli names, which were often given by the clerk at the border. My mother Suzan was now Shoshi, my aunt Monira was now Hanna, and Tune became Mazal. This tradition carried on for many years. Even in the 1990s, Ethiopian Jews who immigrated to Israel were asked to change their names. It was a way to communicate to the immigrants that their previous identity was unwelcome and should be replaced by a new one. It was a promise of belonging, that abandoning the past would provide a new and a better future. In reality the immigrants belonged to neither the old nor the new world; they were trapped in a cultural limbo. My own family’s immigration, like Ben’s, always hovered over my childhood. I knew that both my parents had escaped to Israel as young children with their families. My mother used to tell us kids about that night in 1951 when they left Damascus. My mother was only four years old at the time. Her parents paid a Syrian man who owned a carriage to pick up them and their five young children in the middle of the night, hide them in the back of the wagon, and get them across the border. The man arrived at 2 a.m. They all silently rushed into the back of the wagon and started riding toward the border. About thirty minutes later, to their dismay, they noticed that my four-year-old mother was missing. They had forgotten her at home. They rushed back to find her asleep in her bed, picked her up, and started the ride to the border again. They arrived safely in Israel and settled in Haifa, a northern city on the Mediterranean Sea where Arabs and Jews lived together. They rented a one-bedroom apartment, where my mother and her siblings grew up.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  If I’m still a teenager, playing superhero, looking for revenge, then I’m not a real man.” “Then you act your feelings, instead of understanding them,” I say. “You relive your trauma instead of processing it. I don’t know that there is such a thing as a ‘real man,’” I add, “but I believe the main evidence for strength is the ability to look reality in the eye. When you are able to do that, you save yourself and the next generation from carrying your unprocessed trauma.” “I know exactly what you mean,” Ben says. “My father was a tank driver in the Six-Day War.” In June 1967, when Ben’s father was twenty years old, the Six-Day War broke out . Ben doesn’t know much about his father’s experience as a tank driver in that war. “My dad never talked about it. I only knew from my mom, who met him right after the war, that he was fighting in Jerusalem and that his best friend died there right before his eyes.” The Six-Day War was the third big war for Israel since 1948. It was that war that changed the old stereotype of the Jewish male. Israelis were proud of the young men who had won the war in only six days, and a new image of a Jewish man arose. Not only was that man seen as more masculine; he was like King David, able to defeat a greater enemy with his strength. Yitzhak Rabin, then Chief of the General Staff, announced after the war that it was the men who had won the war—not technology, not weapons, but the men who overcame enemies everywhere, despite their enemies’ superior numbers and fortifications. He declared that “only their personal stand against the greatest dangers would achieve victory for their country and for their families, and that if victory was not theirs the alternative was annihilation.” The young men’s job, then, was to prevent annihilation. This gave them a way to work through the trauma of the Holocaust and the Jews’ constant threat of persecution. The men carried the weight of history by adopting a hypermasculine role. At eighteen years of age they had to start presenting themselves as confident and fearless . “When I was a child I remember my father waking up in the middle of the night, screaming,” Ben says. “He was traumatized. Who knows what he had seen. I was born only a few years after the Six-Day War.” In Hebrew, the name Ben means “a boy.” When Ben gave me permission to write his story he also helped me choose this pseudonym, a name to disguise his real identity, one that would represent his father’s wish to have a first-born son. “On the day I was called to the army, my father was silent.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  That brings me to my next dilemma,” she continues, and then she presents one of the questions many women in her situation struggle with. “Should I take hormones so I can breastfeed the baby? What do you think?” I follow the connections Alice makes between being an outsider and being a father. She said that she and her mother were the inner circle. Her father was an outsider. I recognize that her current conflict is related to the historical fact that, for her, the only way to love is to be a mother, not a father. She struggles with the fear that not being able to give birth to or breastfeed her child implies that she is a father rather than a mother. The problem of gender binary doesn’t allow fluidity in her perception of herself. It activates the shame of not being a “real woman” and, hence, the fear of becoming her father instead, whose love she couldn’t trust. “Are you worried that you won’t be able to love your baby?” I ask, making the explicit link between gender and love. “Absolutely.” Alice nods. “How do I know that I will be able to love her if I don’t give birth to her and breastfeed her? I’m not so sure a parent can love a baby without those love hormones. I mean, nature has arranged it so that women immediately produce oxytocin.” “It’s as if you believe that love hormones are what make a parent love their child,” I say. “How upsetting,” Alice whispers. “I thought I got over that. What’s wrong with me? Like my mother, I’m stuck being a little girl, still thinking that her father didn’t love her, even though I know it’s more complicated than that.” Alice sighs. “I see what you are saying: that underneath my wish to breastfeed my baby, I worry that I won’t love her the way ‘real’ mothers do, which was the only love I trusted.” “Exactly.” I hear myself using her words. Alice looks at me and I notice her holding back tears. “My father left me and he never came back. The angrier I was, the more he withdrew, until he gave up on me. He didn’t call anymore. He just sent me a birthday gift once a year with a card that read, ‘Happy Birthday, my girl. I love you forever.’ I thought he wrote that because he had to, and that deep inside he didn’t really care. He had a new life with the woman he left us for, new children, and a new house. I’m not sure why I’m crying. I didn’t care about him anyway.” Alice is sobbing. She cries for the father she lost years ago, for the little girl who believed that her sad mother was the only one who could love her.