Kind-hearted women

I have been really impressed with the PBS Independent Lens series:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tv-schedule/

The first installment I saw was Kind-Hearted Woman, which followed a woman recently out of treatment for alcoholism as she tried to put her life back together. There was a family history of alcoholism which led her to foster care, where she was abused, and to her marrying a man who abused her physically and verbally, and abused her daughter and her cousin sexually. Also, her last boyfriend before rehab had been abusive.

Those are some tough patterns to break out of, as deeply rooted as they were, but the thing that struck me most was this progression in Robin, where at the beginning, even though she had already gained some strength in completing rehab, and she was working hard to do what she needed to do, she wasn’t making eye contact, and there was this depressed aspect to her. It’s not just that she was sad, but it was like she was being held down. And then, later, that changed, and she could look at you, and she could look at herself, and she was brighter and happier.

I don’t think it was a coincidence that she ended up working with abuse education and prevention programs. It’s not a coincidence that she was drawn to them, and not a coincidence that as she kept sharing her story it lost its power over her.

When I started expanding my Twitter contacts, one thing that impressed me was how passionate so many of them could be about helping others, even when their own world was collapsing. They will keep their cuts covered so they don’t trigger anyone else, and they will work hard to talk other people out of suicide, even though they really want to die. I was impressed with that, and then I realized, Dang it! They’re overfunctioning. I know this one.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Partly, starting out with the emotional wound of shame, I try and justify my existence by helping others. It’s easier to find them more deserving of my time than myself. And, it is easier to manage their problems than my own. I don’t have to scrutinize myself to help them, which is the most painful thing, and surely their problems are easier to solve, because they are better than me. That is the super-messed up part.

Also, one part of becoming well-acquainted with pain is knowing that I don’t want this for anyone else, and so I have a strong desire to fix it for others. This is also messed up, but not as obviously, because while the sentiments is nice, we ultimately need that pain.

One thing Robin said at one point was that she didn’t wish away any of her experiences, because they made her the person that she was. I haven’t perfectly arrived yet, but I like myself, and I like my life, and a lot of that has come through hardship. There are things that I should have done differently, and I wish I had, but I don’t know what it would have changed. I only have now to work with, and that’s okay.

Looking at these kind-hearted women, there is good and bad. Their ability to look outside of the self, and to care about others no matter how much they are hurting, is beautiful, and a big part of the reason that we are on earth, and it will give them a reason to cling to life when their own desire to live is not enough.

There needs to be self love too. They need to see that the beauty and value that they see outside in others is inside too. It’s hard. There was a time when hearing physical compliments was physically painful for me, and nothing felt more dangerous than having hope about something, because disappointed hope hurts a lot. It’s the risk of new pain when you are barely managing the old pain.

The most insidious thing seems to be the secrecy. Most of these accounts are secret ones, where they have others with their names, and where they connect to the people they know in real life, and they present the façade.

I didn’t let people know what was going on with me either. I did not know that one friend was anorexic, and that another was cutting, until much later. I did know that she was drinking too much, but there were reasons for that I would never have guessed. None of us knew that one really funny guy was severely depressed. Social networking has not changed all of the hiding of the inner life at school; it just gives a place for anonymous sharing.

The problem is that I am more and more convinced that sharing is what is needed. Yes, there are good reasons not to be open. There are people who will mock and torment and exploit, and so we protect ourselves, but the downside of that is we don’t learn how normal we are. We think there’s something horribly wrong with us. Worse than that, because we won’t let anyone know, we get cut off in other ways, not being able to eat around others, or go swimming because you are hiding cuts, and there are always secrets in the way, and we are as sick as our secrets.

But then, as we reach out to help others, we get the chance to learn these things, and to help ourselves too. Someone needs to be reaching back, but it’s our big chance.