Tag: Shame

Sex, Junk, And Menopause

Published on by Scott Williams10 Comments

English: graphic convention of manga, sweating...

I like talking about sex. After you have spent hours talking about depression, stress, marriage break-ups and anxiety it’s nice to talk about the clitoris. There is also the fact that I grew up in a conservative, Canadian culture that didn’t talk about female anatomy unless you are making a lurid joke; so there is the added risqué factor. I have actually caught myself, while in a conversation with a couple about their sex life, wondering, “Am I allowed to talk about this?”. It’s a childish, prudish attitude but frankly that makes it a bit more fun.

It will come as no revelation to anyone that women come to counselling far more than men. Without any verifiable data on hand I would guesstimate that at least 85% of my clients are female. This factor alone has radically changed my own life and taught me more about relationships, women, men, and psychology than any schooling or book. I am able, on some rudimentary level, to understand women far better than I ever did while working with men. I am still a Neanderthal, I admit, but hopefully a teachable one.

But I digress.

Sex is, unsurprisingly, a complicated thing for couples. Heterosexual couples have the added challenge of differing equipment, among other differences. Many men, surprisingly, still do not really understand female anatomy. True confession – as a teenager I didn’t know where women pee’d from. I didn’t have the advantage of an extensive and lurid porn collection and assumed women pee’d from that hole somewhere. My parents were actually very progressive and open about sexuality and I still didn’t figure it out. Laugh if you want – then ask your young teen. We’re dudes, our junk is on the outside and free to peruse at our leisure. Ok, now I feel like an idiot. As they say, laugh at yourself and you’ll never run out of material.

But I digress.

Menopause is another area that men don’t really understand. Why are you sweating without covers on? What do you mean when you say, “I feel like a furnace, the heat comes from the inside”? Can you really have a period for a month? Or not at all? Why does it suddenly hurt? Don’t you desire me anymore? Don’t I do it for you anymore?

Why are you crying? And once again, stop sweating!

It is easy to be critical of men and assume they are clueless about women because… well… we are. No one took us aside (outside of pornography where women all want sex all the time in every position imaginable and orgasm in about a minute) and explained your junk, or how to communicate, or even how to act like a man or a passionate lover. You don’t make any sense to us and we are usually too embarrassed and insecure to ask you for directions.

I love getting directions. But then again, I’m weird.

Women who are with men would do well to understand that we have not been properly taught how to understand you. Our teachers were our fathers (Neanderthals) and the dark side of the internet (run by Neanderthals). We don’t stand around at the job-site and ask each other about our feelings or talk about our relationships (at least not in a way you would appreciate). Few of us are in touch with our feelings and we do not understand how to ask for guidance or input in such a way that you won’t get disgusted or laugh. Telling me to “stop that!” only scares the hell out of me and further entrenches my belief that you are an alien species who cannot be understood. Add the male communication handicap and you have a recipe for misunderstanding. When it comes to the bedroom arena, couples really should spend at least as much time talking as they do… kissing. Creating an atmosphere free from ridicule or shame is the best gift you can give to your sex life. Talk, then touch. Then talk some more. You will be glad you did.

Are you done sweating yet?

The Smell Of Rotting Fish

Published on by Scott Williams6 Comments

When I was a kid my dad took me fishing on Primrose Lake, a private military lake that is used for target practice and inaccessible to the general public. My dad pulled a few strings and before I knew it we were fishing between bombardments. It was incredible. The fish practically jumped in the boat. It took twenty minutes for three of us to catch our limit of big, big fish. The cleaning took far longer than the catching.

We filled our freezer with fish that summer. Summer also brought holiday time and before long we were off to the family camping trip, thoughts of Primrose Lake far behind us. What we didn’t know was that, just before we left, someone had accidentally pulled the plug on our huge freezer.

Two weeks later.

We got home and the house reeked of bad fish. Why, we wondered, was that odor so pronounced? It didn’t take us long to find our way downstairs and finally open the now completely defrosted freezer… full to the brim with brine and water and dead smelly fish.

What to do?

It was tempting to just close that lid and walk away. We could have dressed up that freezer, even painted it a new color, but that wouldn’t have changed what was inside it. We could have hired a psychotherapist to talk to the fridge, maybe a pastor could have come by and cast a demon out of the thing. It would not have mattered. Dress up that thing any way you want and the fact remains that it still is a freezer full of rotting fish. No amount of therapy could have changed that.

That’s alot like me… like you. I try to make excuses for my problems and blame someone else but at the end of the day the fact remains that it is still my mess-o-fish. It is not my ex-wife’s problem or my kids or my parents, it isn’t even my ex-bosses issue – it is mine alone. At the end of the day I can blame whoever I want, it’s still my problem.

So why is this so hard to accept? Perhaps because blaming other people relieves me of some of the responsibility. Many of us have been through horrific situations wrought by dysfunctional and abusive people who scarred us for life. Unfortunately, however, they are not going to fix us. Most of them will not even feel responsible. No one else is going to help us heal.

Other people may be to blame, but that doesn’t really matter much, now does it. It’s up to us to find a healing, a solution, or a way of coping. It may seem far easier to go through life wounded, blaming others for my issues but at the end of the day I am the only one who is going to miss out of this one life, this one chance at happiness and wholeness.

There is an iconic scene in the movie American History X where the skinhead Derek Vineyard, after being gang-raped by his once cohorts while in prison, has a visit from his African-American high school principal. The principal, Bob Sweeney, who has watched Derek self-destruct as he blamed everyone else for his pain, says, “There was a moment, when I used to blame everything and everyone for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me, that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn’t get no answers ’cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions.”

Derek turns to him and asks, “Like what?”

Sweeney replies, “Has anything you’ve done made your life better?”

That is a profound question. He knew Derek had pains and hurts, grudges both valid and vile. Like many of us Derek had been damaged by someone or something. Violated. Carrying that hate and that pain was all that he knew. How could he possibly get on with his life after what had happened to him?

Some time ago I wrote a letter to someone who had hurt me, never intending on sending it. The next morning my wife saw it before I could get up and mailed it, as a courtesy. A few weeks later I got a phone call from that old friend. He could not understand why I was angry.

Think about it. For seven years he had not been carrying that pain I felt almost everyday. For seven years he had been perfectly happy and content. He didn’t hurt, only I did. It hadn’t ruined his life.

Has anything you’ve done made your life better?

He Probably Had It Coming…

Published on by Scott Williams14 Comments

Let me start out by saying I was raised to never hit a woman… ever. I think husbands and boyfriends who hit their spouses are pigs and cowards. Please do not write me and accuse me of treating the subject of violent men flippantly. Take a look at this blog and ask yourself if I let men off the hook too lightly.

Lately, however, I have been noticing an equally disturbing trend in domestic violence – wives/girlfriends beating their spouses.

I was commenting about this to someone recently and they immediately went on the offense. They started out by saying “he probably deserved it.” They went on to say further, “well what did he do to her?”

Seriously?

I find it intriguing that when I have been involved in domestic situations where a woman is battered those questions never come up. Ever. They are political suicide to ask, bordering on slander. Only a misogynistic douchebag would hint that a woman had it coming. Yet it seems perfectly acceptable to ask when the victim is a man.

I would have to admit that I hear of an alarming number of situations involving a battering wife/girlfriend. It’s shocking and something you never talk about. After all, what kind of man would complain? Is he a wimp? Surely she was protecting herself.

This is overt sexism and absolutely unacceptable. I have heard of men being hit with the car, beaten with cast iron, knives being thrown, kicked between the legs, faces slapped on a regular basis. I personally know several men who are afraid of their spouse, demoralized and emasculated. In counseling these men question their masculinity, even their sexuality. They cannot talk to any friends about this, for fear they will be belittled or accused of violence themselves. One man told me he feels “physically, emotionally, and sexually violated” by his wife. These same men were taught to never hit a woman and so complain that they have no defense against violence. They somehow have come to the conclusion that, in order to be a “real man”, they must take it and keep silent.

Recently I have also had clients who are in a lesbian relationship and feeling the sting of physical and emotional violence. They are also unsure of how to handle the situation. They have also struggled to be heard. Transgender people have long felt the sting as well. We all know about the abuse of gay men.

It is a horrible thing when relationships end in violence, and it is certainly no more acceptable for a woman to be physically violent than a man. I am seriously afraid that someday a man will retaliate after being struck by a female – then beat her up – charge her with assault – and win. This could open up the doors to rampant abuse and violence.

It’s time to stop the cycles of violence wherever they occur.

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Imagine Me Naked

Published on by Scott Williams15 Comments

Some time ago I was cleaning up at the little club I used to run, in preparation for the evening’s events. I had been sweating, washing floors and hauling furniture. I usually bring a change of clothing. But not that day.

No one had come in for over an hour. I figured I was safe. With this in mind, behind the bar I proceeded to drop my pants in order to change into clean clothes. At that precise moment a lady walked in and asked for a latte.

Never before have I felt so close to the bar. In fact, we became one as I sought to prepare the latte without letting on that I was wearing no pants. Socks, shoes, shirt, but no pockets.

It reminds me of this bit by Seinfeld:
“Why is it so difficult and uncomfortable to be naked? It’s because when you have clothes on, you can always make those little adjustments that people love to do. Hitching, straightening, adjusting. You know, you feel like you’re getting it together. But when you’re naked, it’s so final. You’re just, ‘well this is it, there’s nothing else I can do.”
That’s why I like to wear a belt when I’m naked. It gives me something. I’d like to get pockets to hang off the belt. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate? To be naked and still be able to put your hands in your pockets. I think that would really help a lot…”

It may shock you to know that I have been in counselling. Maybe not. I once had a counsellor tell me I needed to stand in front of the mirror naked for one minute each day in order to get more comfortable with ‘me’. I told this to someone and they went “eeeew”… which did not help much.

So with all this rolling around in my noodle I continued to grind the beans, praying all the while that I would not have to move. So of course the lady blandly asked where the sugar was, it being at right angles to where I was hiding. I reluctantly told her and proceeded to push my torso inside the small floor fridge as she walked to the condiments.

As she left the club I followed her behind the bar, keeping my beautiful barrier between us until she naively walked out.

Imagine me naked. Ok, don’t. No one should have to see that. Most of us, myself included, are not in love with our naked selves. I tease my wife that she “secretly dresses me with her eyes”. One of my best friends, Jordon Cooper, says I have a “face for radio”. I am no longer as insecure about my looks as I once was, but can still testify that for most of us, physical appearance has a significant role in determining our self-esteem. My wife once pointed out to me that I was squinting while looking in the mirror at our bedroom sinks. I had no idea I was doing this but apparently was squinting in such a pronounced fashion that Annette thought my eyes were closed – a subconscious reaction to a psychological malady. Body image is a life-long issue for most of us.

A few years ago, again while naked, I had an epiphany. I realized in the shower one day that I had been berating myself all my life and was unwilling to move forward, heal, and stop the body dysmorphia. Like so many of us I wasn’t thinking about my body because I was overly proud or seeking to show it off, I was in fact transfixed on the negatives and unwilling to let the embarrassment go.

It has taken me far to long to realize that this is just a shell and no matter how hard I try or how much I whine I am only going to get older, saggier, less flexible, and probably balder. There is little, short of surgery, that I can do to arrest the passing of time.

A shell. Maybe  a fat shell or a ridiculously thin shell, a hairy or bald shell, a saggy shell or a beautiful one, does it really matter? Isn’t it time that we stop letting plastic, Photoshopped, insecure skeletons or fake vampires with no nipples dictate how we feel about ourselves? It doesn’t really matter what you look like if you are healthy and can learn to like yourself. For some reason my wife thinks I am good-looking and that needs to be enough for me.

Even if she didn’t, I’m tired of jumping through hoops for a shell.

 

Weekend Musings – There Are Victims And Then There Are Victims

Published on by Scott Williams13 Comments

“A benchmark of emotional management and responsibility is the realization that our past can no longer be blamed for our actions in the present.“
Doc Childe and Howard Martin

Every day I work with people who are victims, real or imagined. They grew up in a bad home, someone has rejected them, the white man has dragged them down, people have taken advantage of them, they have been abused, raped, abandoned, the list is endless. There is no shortage of people to blame.

Usually the client or person I am talking to has legitimate issues. They are dealing with things that most people can barely imagine. They are trying, the best they know how, to find some anchor in a life that has been beyond their control. Many patients I have spoken with have gone through horror stories and are endeavouring to move forward. They are the reason I get up in the morning and go to work excited. They are my heroes.

Others are looking for something to pin their pain on. They cannot see any personal responsibility, they will not own their own complicity. They sit and we talk and it is always someone else’s fault. Often they have legitimate complaints but they wear their victimization like a crown and filter everything through with a pre-disposed diagnosis. This week I met with a young man who told me that the reason he could not pass in school was because generations ago people oppressed him. I reminded him that he was not in fact alive a couple hundred years ago and though he has had to suffer historic abuse and that has undoubtedly profoundly affected his life, perhaps the reasons he is failing in school have more to do with the fact that he is skipping and spending his considerable income on crack. He called me a bigot.

I come from generations of alcoholics and the pragmatically poor. My dad was an orphan whose father fell from a skyscraper during his last week of work before going to a new job. His mother died when he was 12. He completed grade 9 in school. He had no social safety net, no social worker looking out for him, no strong family to provide for him, no one to blame. So he didn’t.

Years later my father would stand before the Governor General of Canada and receive the military equivalent of the Order of Canada, our highest civilian honor. He had, in fact, finally finished his high school equivalency in his forties. He had worked his butt off to make something of a shunted life. He is my son’s hero. Wednesday he will be our guest blogger.

Every now and again I will have occasion to feel sorry for myself. Maybe things aren’t going smoothly or my friends have nicer houses or boats. Sometimes I wish I had a family with money and a house on a lake. But then I remember how fortunate I am to come from a heritage that simply would not give up.

As i sit here writing this it just hit me, I have never heard my dad complain about his lot in life. Ever.
Wow.

“People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives.”
J. Michael Straczynski

 

The Masks We Wear

Published on by Scott Williams19 Comments

Masked.“Mate, you’ve been honest with me so let me honest back. Honestly, you could do a better job than many. You should be being heard and you should be leading the charge. However, as you say, a key thing is your personality. There is an enormous place for you and every time I’m with you I think you are a wasted talent.”

That letter was many years ago now but it has haunted me. You may argue that no one has the right to send someone a letter like that, especially since it was during a time when my life was falling apart. It really hurt. It was soul crushing.

I have always known I was different.
They say you can trace a lot of things back to your childhood. If this is true then it explains a lot in my case. One of my earliest memories is of when, at approximately the age of three or four, I hung myself in my backyard.
We lived in typical suburbia where blue-collar workers dream of long weekends and tall cocktails. Our backyard buttressed onto a virtual forest, replete with red fencing and the quintessential barbeque pit. There was also a square clothes line, the kind where someone has dropped six inches of concrete into the grass and rammed in a pole and enough line for two point four children. The exact details fail me now but nonetheless I pulled up a stool, crossed the wires, inserted my head and kicked away the floor. My sister walked out a minute or two later, and seeing my dilemma, ran in to my parents yelling, “mommy, daddy, Scott hung himself!”

When, a couple of years later, I threw a lit match into a five gallon gas can to see if it was empty I think it was beginning to dawn on my parents that their newly bald son, sporting no eyebrows and lashes, had a few issues.

My grade three report card actually said, “Scott thinks he runs the class and frankly I am sick of it!”

Like many of us I can look back on my life and see a variety of pitiful attempts to fit in. As a little child I have vivid memories of my grandmother telling me that ‘children are to be seen and not heard’. I remember being demeaned by relatives for being hyperactive and aggressive. Today I am sure I would be diagnosed as ADHD and medicated, but back then, like many of us, I was just a kid trying to fit in and be loved.’

As we grow up we begin to realize that we are supposed to act a certain way. In order to fit in and be popular many of us wore a mask to hide the hurt, to pretend we were all together, to live a lie. We began to understand that we couldn’t be ourselves because who we were on the inside just wasn’t good enough. As the poem says so well:

Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks
masks that I’m afraid to take off
and none of them are me.
I give you the impression that I’m secure
That all is sunny and unruffled with me
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name
and coolness my game,
that the water’s calm
and I’m in command,
and that I need no one.

Many of you are afraid that if you really let someone in, let them see the real you, they would reject you. This belief has some truth to it, doesn’t it? We’ve been hurt before, ridiculed and demeaned before. The older we grow the harder it gets to be honest with people. We have loved before and been burned. We have given our heart away only to have it stepped on. Most of us have a long list of people who have done us wrong.

It’s so much easier to wear a mask.

Some of us have been wearing a mask so long we aren’t even sure who we really are. We have been forced to be someone else by our spouse or our parents or others. Many people have been told since they were a child that they aren’t good enough the way they are; that people who matter don’t like their personality, that they are somehow flawed. I know I was.

Maybe you can relate to what I am writing about. Perhaps you have said to yourself, “If people really knew me they wouldn’t love me”. You have some terrible junk in your past, things you’ve done or didn’t do, ways you couldn’t measure up. Most people have a hard time forgiving themselves for things they did ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. I’ve been there too. We have scars that never seem to heal.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. One day I just decided I’d had enough. Enough self-ridicule, enough doubt and negativity and condemnation. Enough of feeling like a loser who is unlovable. Enough of hating myself and apologizing for who I am.

I have come to realize that it’s ok being me, in spite of my glaring faults. And you know what, it’s ok to be you too.

You are amazing. Unique. Special. Maybe no one has told you that in a long time but it’s true. Maybe your partner or a family member or friend has demeaned you and hurt your self-esteem. Stop listening to them. You don’t need to change who are.You don’t have to apologize for being opinionated, or creative, outspoken or different. Take off the mask and if people don’t love you for who you really are then they are not worth it. Stop surrounding yourself with negative people who feel it’s their god-given right to put you in your place. Someone who really cares about you will want you just the way you are. Without the mask.

It’s ok to be you. It’s more than ok, it’s fantastic.

(tomorrow I’ll return to the regular stuff so if you don’t like this post, that’s ok, I needed to say it)

Guest Blogger – I’m a Sex Addict. I’m Also a Pastor.

Published on by Scott Williams3 Comments

Wednesdays I host a guest blogger – professionals, clients, friends, strangers; stories of success and failure, people who are suffering, some who are opinionated, all of whom are a work in progress. These are struggles about real life issues. If you are interested in telling your story email me at info@scott-williams.ca.

“Is that all? Is there anything else?”

“Uh huh…Is that all? Is there anything else?”

That’s pretty much all I heard for three hours as I recited the list of all the people I hated, all the fears I had, the long list of my sexual misconducts, and the ways I had harmed pretty much everyone I had ever met. Before that day, I had never told anyone most of the things on that list.

I’m a sex addict. I’m also a minister. That’s why this article is anonymous. Think what you like about that combination, I didn’t choose either one of those identities. One’s a wound, the other’s a gift. One is who I am, the other is who I’m called to be.

I can’t remember the first time I was exposed to porn. It was ever-present in my family, but never truly visible, never openly talked about. It was one of those things that adults could joke about in their indirect way, but an innocently curious kid could never get a straight answer about. I was just someone to laugh at and tell, “Wait until you’re older.”

When I got caught trying to find out what all the jokes were about, I was mildly rebuked and whatever I was trying to look at was taken away. It became a warped kind of game: find a magazine, sneak it someplace private and try to understand what it was all about, then get caught and teased for being so “curious”. It turned into an adrenaline-based obsession with the mysteries of sex.

Consequently, women have always stirred a mixture of shame and wonder in me that I still can’t really understand. My early exposure to porn added a sexualized “twist” to every interaction I have with a member of the female gender. I have always felt that I needed to both hide and apologize for that “twist”, even before I went into the ministry.

All through High School and Bible College I knew I had to “get it under control”. Of course I knew it was incompatible with my faith and my calling – I’m not stupid, nor am I without a conscience. So I went to work: Self-control. Cold showers. “Eyes on the face”. Bible reading. Accountability groups. Tear-filled confessions to girlfriends. On again/off again relationships. “Purity commitments.”

By some miracle, I got married, and hoped things would get better. What a joke. A real person with her own baggage was no match for my infinite curiosity/shame cycle. Despite what most people think about porn, it wasn’t that her appearance couldn’t measure up to the images. It was that her appetite could never match my curiosity, my need to know, and my longings to try and explore and experiment. I didn’t think she was a doll or some plaything, I just didn’t really know ANYTHING (and yes, I still feel that way after a more than two decades of marriage).

So there I was, preaching God’s Word every week, daily helping people with their problems. Surfing porn every chance I got, trying to quit every time I surfed. Hypocrite. Guilty. Dirty. Shameful. The more guilt I heaped on myself, the worse I felt. The worse I felt, the more I needed something to make myself feel better. This led to increasingly greater compulsions to surf, leading to more guilt. A wretched, solitary cycle with no end in sight.
And then, out of the blue, a miracle happened. Someone in my church asked me to do a “Fifth Step” with him. I had no idea what that was, so I asked my friend Scott. He explained it to me – told me what to do, how to not react, what to say at the end. So, I booked some time at a monastery. This guy and I went into a room and he started talking.

And talking.

And talking.

I listened, nodded and said, “Is that all, do you have anything else you need to tell me?” And at the end, I looked him in the eyes and say, “Now that you’ve confessed all these things with God and one other person, you are forgiven.”

I’ll never forget the change that came over that man. You had to be there to believe it. It was as if light entered his body and shone out his face. Tears of gold streamed down into his goatee. This tough old drunk jumped up, grabbed me in a death-hug and sobbed for what felt like an hour. Then he turned around and walked out the door.

Alone in the room, standing in shock at what had just happened, the thought came to me, “I wonder who I could ask to do that for me?” I couldn’t think of anybody good, so I asked Scott. (Actually, that’s kind of the truth – I didn’t want to do this with ANYONE. But I picked Scott as the best option I had.) We went for a drive, and he did the same thing to me that he told me to do to that other guy. He listened and asked, “Is there anything else?” Even though I knew what he was doing, I found myself telling him everything. All the stuff I was embarrassed about. Things I was ashamed of. Things I was ashamed of being ashamed of. Everything I could remember came out on that drive.

Greatest gift ever. Suddenly I knew I wasn’t alone. Suddenly I wasn’t the only one who ever struggled. I wasn’t a hypocrite anymore, because someone else knew the whole story, the real me. Someone saw that confused, curious little boy that just couldn’t get any answers. Someone heard all my scary, stupid, shameful shit and didn’t run away screaming. Or laughing. I think that’s what I was most afraid of, now that I think about it – having my depravity laughed at. Having my sickness being pointed at as being small and weak and pathetic. My first step five dignified my sin as being bad enough to need confession, but not bad enough to need condemnation. And then it washed it all away.

Notice I said my FIRST step five. Much as I’d like to say that was the key to a miraculous transformation, and that lust and shame are no longer a part of my life, that’s not the case. There’s no magic bullet for me. Almost fifteen years after that day, and multiple times through the 12 Steps, I still struggle. I still bring a sexual “twist” into every interaction with a woman. And I still feel a twinge of shame & a desire to apologize for it. My marriage is still “interesting”. I carry an extra load every day in addition to the “normal” load of a pastor trying to honor God and love His people. It’s hard enough being a pastor – doing it as a sex addict amps up the challenge even more.
But – something did change on that day. I know I’m not the worst. I’m not the weirdest. I’m not pathetic, and I’m not alone. I’m a legit member of the human race; strengths, struggles and all. I have hope that I can be both a sex addict and a pastor. I’m finding a way to act out my calling without acting out my disease.

And once I knew that ONE person could know me as I truly am, it gave me the courage to show that same person to others. One at a time, God has given me the ability and privilege to tell my story to several people in my life so that every day, someone I see knows who I am and what I’m dealing with.
I am a pastor. I am a sex addict. I am loved. And one day at a time, I can be free. Greatest gift ever. Thank God. Thanks Scott.

Casual Friday – Lessons From Life

Published on by Scott WilliamsLeave a comment

Beck - "Loser"I really like redheads. That has little to do with this blog but I thought you should know.

Many years ago, while in grade eight, I briefly dated a redhead named Lynn. She dumped me after a three weeks, telling me that God told her to break up with me. Even God doesn’t want you to date me. That was many years ago and to this day we remain great friends.

Lynn loves to travel. She and her husband Phil have been all over the world, but they love Israel the most. Don’t ask me why; I prefer the Caribbean anytime but that’s her deal, so mazel tov. Once when they were in the holy land someone offered her husband ten camels for her. I don’t know a great deal about camels but even I understand that this must be a hefty price. If you talk to Lynn she will, from time to time, remind you that she is a ‘ten-camel woman’. And why not, she has proof.

Most of us are not ten-camel people. We watch television and see beautiful people running down beaches and kissing under the moonlight, and down deep we are convinved that we don’t measure up. We are ugly people. We are the losers. We don’t have big boats or businesses, we don’t look good in a Speedo, we aren’t great singers or dancers or poets. We are only regular people with too much cellulite and not enough collagen.

Royal Soucy was a neighbour of mine. He was like a tree trunk with teeth. Royal was a professional body builder who had won several prestigious competitions including “Mr. Saskatchewan” a few times. I would tease Royal that with a name like “Royal Soucy” he had to be tough. But I would not tease him too much. I was afraid he would eat me if I made him too mad. Royal was a cop. Royal was French. There are legends around Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan about the policeman who would break up bar brawls single-handedly. The day I moved in to the neighbourhood we were unloading and I saw our neighbor on his roof shingling. Let me describe this for you; he looked like a Muscle Magazine cover. He was massive. Huge. Totally cut and only wearing shorts, sweating like some Greek god roofing his villa. Then my wife said, “I have a great idea. Why don’t you go help that guy with his roof. You could take off your shirt and get a good tan and get to know him.” So naive… Samson and Captain Chicken Wings, doing the roof together.

Growing up I was never a person who was quick to take his shirt off. Some people are blessed with pectoral genetics, I never was. Now that I’m in my forties it’s a little easier being the slim guy in the midst of a group of men struggling with weight, but growing up I was embarrassed.

I don’t like losing my hair. It’s a stupid vanity thing, but I can’t seem to get over it. It’s a constant reminder that I don’t look like I’d like to, that at this point I probably won’t be a model. Yes, I tell myself, that’s the only reason I’m not a model.

We used to have a rat named Mr. Bigglesworth. People thought he was disgusting. We loved him. Rats are smarter than most animals and we could let him out and he would pretend to pounce me, sleep on my chest, play a rat version of catch. On the downside, he had no bowel control so that whole running around thing rarely ended well. People would comment how he was almost cute, except for his long ugly tail. I would remind them that this wasn’t Mr. B’s fault, we all have parts we are not proud of.

It is one thing to squint in the mirror. It’s another thing altogether when that shame reaches deeper into our hearts. Ruined self-esteem, poor self-image, feelings of worthlessness. Shame is a huge thing. The more I look into it the more I am coming to realize that it can be one of the most destructive issues in our lives. Most of us carry around a backpack of failures, mistakes, and missed opportunities. We wear labels that we cannot seem to shake – fat, divorced, whore, loser, stupid, bald, old, pathetic, poor, alone, ugly, fag…

Shame is the experience of feeling defective at the core of your being. We feel guilty about our mistakes. Shame is the experience of feeling that you as a person ARE A MISTAKE.

With shame there is no way of making amends or correcting the wrong. Because the wrong is you. I have been insecure about myself most of my life but like many of you I am tired of feeling inadequate. I’m done apologizing for being an extrovert, or ADHD, or opinionated. I no longer am willing to try to fit in at the expense of my self-esteem. I tell clients that the opposite of poor self-esteem is not good self-esteem, it’s self acceptance. Accepting ourselves with all our warts and wrinkles and issues. Learning to love ourselves in spite of the things about ourselves we don’t like, not because of the things we do.

That’s a hell of a goal, isn’t it?