How A Shame Spiral Led Me to Realize I Am Enough

This morning, I opened Instagram and saw that one of my former colleagues just completed a Master’s program.

It sent me into a two-hour shame spiral.

This individual is someone who I never knew well, admittedly, as she and I were staffed as writers at the same online media publication for a year or two. I always admired both the quality of her work and the speed at which she produced it, to which I felt I could never fully measure up to (despite, I know from others telling me so, that people have held me in this same regard).

I remember when I first learned of her existence maybe ten years ago, I instantly felt rage and shame boiling to the surface of both my body and mind. I had a visceral, guttural reaction to her, which I now know is more about my own insecurities and beliefs than anything to do with her.

I haven’t spoken to her since that time, but have kept up with her here and there on social media. Seeing this news pop up in my feed today brought all of those feelings back instantaneously, like a tidal wave sending me to the sand.

I started to hate-stalk her LinkedIn, learn about the program she completed, and wonder with jealous rage how she could have the time to be a full-time graduate student, writer, volunteer, coach, consultant, and publish a book, all at the same time. I wanted to assume she either half-assed these endeavors, embellished her resume, or straight-up lied about some of her accomplishments.

I started to look into graduate programs myself, feeling nauseous at the fact that I only possessed one Master’s degree while I knew that she held two. 

None of this really matters, I told myself, over and over again. Yet, I still felt the pit of anxiety and shame in my stomach. I still wanted to punish myself for not being or doing enough, for not shining as brightly as I perceived her to.

Instead of getting defensive, giving into distractions, or tearing her down, this time, I dared to look inward.

Very quickly, I saw how she was holding a mirror to myself, of all of the pain and insecurities I’ve had for twenty years, that have become more apparent to me in the last two.

For a long while, it was hard for me to write anything, and at the peak of my writing career it wasn’t unusual for me to churn out as many as five to six articles in a day. I thrived on chaos during my early 20’s and would push myself to reach my full potential, as I saw my own capacities and talents. However, several traumas and personal tragedies brought back my PTSD that I didn’t even know I had in my childhood and I found my ability to write to be absolutely shot. It would sometimes take me an hour or two to craft a simple email and my entire professional identity was tied to my ability to create.

A global pandemic saved me from myself, while also further shoving my professional aspirations into the basement. I struggled immensely over the next few years and was forced into working in retail, just to survive. After so many years of success, I felt like a failure, as I folded expensive t-shirts, stocked merchandise on 10-foot ladders, and sold clothing to rich almond Mom’s.

As if things weren’t bad enough, my apartment building then caught fire and I was without a place to live. I had to abandon most of the things I owned and hop from hotel to hotel, sublet to sublet, with six suitcases in tow as I tried desperately to piece a life together.

This all changed when I met my husband. I was fortunate enough to join the life of someone who didn’t are about my productive value and offered me the chance to build a life on my own terms. I’ve been able to just be without deadlines, obligations, emails, or meetings, and I’ve never felt more at peace.

Yet.

Something inside of myself refuses to rest. 

I have felt guilty over not working, because of how tied up one’s self-worth is to their ability to produce. I’ve felt lost and alone, because I no longer have titles and identities to uphold, even if they never felt like my own. When I meet someone and they ask me the dreaded “What do you do for a living?” I never know what to say. I feel ashamed that I don’t trade my labor for money and wonder how I’m being judged, as I also judge myself.

I have also created ideas and plans for a return to the workforce, that I somehow never see through because it’s not what I truly want. I struggled for so long to exit the very establishments that I now strategize on how to re-enter; it’s absurd!

I also find ways to keep myself busy almost always, with magical to-do lists of every hobby I want to learn, craft I want to try, and skill I want to develop. Although it might seem virtuous, it’s really a tether, a chain even, that I use to imprison myself into becoming someone worthy of being alive and loved.

I wasn’t much concerned about productive value until I was around 10 or 11 years old, when my father and step mother compared me to their standard of how children should be and made it clear I wasn’t doing enough and the things I did do were frivolous. If I wasn’t pursuing sports or social activities, I was wasting my time. Sure, they’d come to the recitals, flowers in hand, but never once would they take me to a dance class or rehearsal. The public moments they’d show up for, but that was the extent of their interest.

I started to use my ability to write and advocate as a teenager to build a life for myself, that catapulted me out of their household (where I was the majority of my teen years) and into my authentic self. I joined volunteer groups, activist committees, wrote for blogs, started my own, and started writing voraciously. I was published in the Huffington Post and speaking at conferences, before I could even legally drink. 

What I realized this afternoon was that I had created an identity for myself that was beautiful and inspiring, but that was dependent on my ability to produce. If I couldn’t write, if I couldn’t create I couldn’t be free. If I couldn’t work, I didn’t have an internal sense of self-worth I could access. Even now, if there are weeks where I don’t crochet, embroider, learn music, or do much of anything, I feel as though I shouldn’t have the right to exist.

This morning, her master’s degree was showing me this aspect of myself, giving me the opportunity to fully integrate this lesson. Now, I feel grateful for her achievement, because I don’t have to measure myself against the measuring stick of her success. 

Just being is enough. 

I am enough.

And just as I’m learning this, the words are flowing out of me.