CONTEXTO GEOGRÁFICO

I spoke earlier about the rupture of the self as the deepest cut of internalized shame. Once internalized we no longer have the feeling of shame — we are it. Because we experience ourselves as flawed and defective, we cannot look at ourselves without pain. Therefore we must create a false self. The false self is the second layer of defense erected to alleviate the felt sense of toxic shame.

All major schools of therapy speak about this false self. The Jungians call it the persona (the mask). The TA people call it the adapted child.

Bob Subby speaks of the public self which he contrasts with the private self. He uses a fantastic drawing to illustrate the point. Figure 3.2 is an adaptation of Bob's drawing. The tiny little figure that gets smaller and smaller is the shame-based authentic self. The larger figure is the false or public self.

The Bible speaks of the Pharisee hypocrite. In Greek hypocrite means an actor, one who is pretending. Jesus didn't like false selves.

The est Training (The Forum now) confronts people's act: their melo-dramatic story. The act or story is the mythologized self: the phony performing self.

I divide the false self into three categories: The Cultural False Self, Life Scripts and The Family System Roles.

The Cultural False Self

In the previous section I outlined our cultural sex roles, pointing out how these roles set up a perfectionistic system of measurement. Since each of us is utterly unique and unrepeatable, there is no way to compare us or measure us. In this way our rigid sex roles are shaming.

It's important to see the dynamics of how sex roles come into being.

Sociologists describe the process under the phrase "the social construction of reality". As we understand this social construction process, it is easier to see how we can readily identify with these roles and make them our false self.

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THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY

Each of us is born into a social order that has already arrived at a

"consensus reality". This phrase is used by sociologists to describe the product of our social construction of reality. Human beings are creatures of habit.

As we humans act in repetitious ways, necessitated by circumstances relating to survival, these repetitions become habitual. These habitual behaviors soon become socially acceptable ways of behaving. They are socially agreed upon. After a while these socially agreed upon habitual ways of behaving become what sociologists term "legitimized". After being legitimized for a while, they become unconscious. The unconscious legitimizations gradually evolve into laws of reality. We no longer question them. We accept them: they are predictable. They insure our security. If someone tries to change them, we get very upset.

In fact, they are not reality at all As cultural anthropologists have continuously pointed out, other cultures do things quite differently. The laws of reality that emerged from our legitimized habituations are actually a 'consensus reality'. The 'consensus reality' is what we've all agreed on as constituting reality.

A prominent part of every culture's consensus reality is its notion of what a man is, what a woman is and what a marriage and family are. At birth it was already decided how you and I must be and behave in order to be a real man and a real woman. These stereotyped roles are perfect for shame-based identities. When I play the role of a real man, I receive generous cultural rewards. These stereotyped roles often shame the parts of our authentic self which does not correspond to the role ideal. In their current form our cultural sex roles were legitimized during the period of western expansion.

Men were the hunters and warriors, and women kept the children and the wagons.

I certainly believe in some biological grounding in the sexes. But our current sex roles go far beyond biological grounding. They are caricatures of their biological ground. As I pointed out before, they also deny the obvious androgenous polarity in every man and woman. Each of us resulted from the union of male and female. Each of us embody both male and female hormones. A healthy person is a balance between so-called male and female traits.

These roles not only shame us but they become our refuge of hiding. As we pretend to be real men and women, we can hide the fact that we really don't know who we are. We can mood alter by playing our role to the hilt.

In the mood alteration of being a real man or woman, we can avoid our painful shame.

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Life Scripts

Eric Berne, the founder and original creator of Transactional Analysis, developed the notion of life scripts. He observed the fact that a part of the population live very tragic lives. Their lives are tragic because they seem to have no choice. They are like actors playing their roles according to a script.

Berne felt that the majority of the population acted out banal or melodramatic lives. The melodramatic scripts were described by Thoreau when he said that the mass of humanity live lives of quiet desperation.

Berne felt that very few people live truly authentic lives.

Scripts are like the scripts for a movie or a play. They describe a certain type of character. They proscribe what he is to feel and not feel and how he is to behave in life. Tragic scripts usually end in killing someone or oneself;

or living out one's life in a form of chronic suicide; or in being considered crazy.

Claude Steiner, the TA therapist, speaks of three basic Tragic Scripts: the no mind (crazy) script, no love (kill someone or yourself) script, and the no feel (addictions) script. These tragic scripts are set up through the shaming of our basic powers: to know, to love and to feel.

The formation of scripts is complicated. The core mechanism of the process occurs by means of choices resulting from injunctions and attributions, script modeling and life experiences.

INJUNCTIONS

Injunctions come from the shame-based child in the parent. Injunctions are usually nonverbal. They take the form of messages like don't be; don't be a girl; don't be a boy; don't be important or successful. All toxic scripts have the injunction "don't be you". An injunction shames the authentic self and causes self-rupture.

ATTRIBUTIONS

Attributions are more conscious and usually come from verbal emotional abuse. Messages like "How can you be so dumb or stupid?" or "What do you use for brains?" sets one up for the no mind script. Messages like 'You really love your brother, don't you?" or "That's not my little boy who is acting hateful," sets one up to never know what his own feelings of love are.

Messages like, "I know you're not really angry," or "There's nothing to cry about," discount one's feelings and cause confusion.

Attributes can come directly as when Mom is talking to her friend and says of your brother, "He's my well-behaved child," and of you, "She's my little hellion." Other types of parental attribution messages are, "You're always

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going to have trouble with your studies, weight, anger, etc.," "You're never going to amount to anything," "You've always been selfish. God help the person you marry." Or "Every man in this family has been a lawyer." Or "No woman in our family has ever been divorced." Script messages tell us the way we are or what role we are supposed to play in life. They shame who we authentically are and create self-rupture.

MODELS

I've already covered the subject of parental models as part of the dynamics of shame internalization. Script models are not limited to parents.

They could come from fairy tales, movies, TV or other actual cultural or family models. Women who had nonavailable, abusive fathers might magically identify with Beauty And The Beast and act out the main acts of that fairy tale over and over in their life by marrying beastly men.

Women are often given the magical belief that if they wait long enough, their prince will come. Magic plays a part in many shame-based people's lives. Hiding behind fantasies of "someday", "if only" and "when" — a person may live out his life waiting for a miry godmother or godfather. The fantasy bond sets people up for magical transferences to other fantasy bonds.

LIFE EXPERIENCES

A person's experiences help share the script. What is happening in the family is a major factor in script formation. If Mom's an alcoholic, a child may take on a helper or rescuing role. As the child experiences attention and praise for this role, it becomes a strong element in sealing the script as a rescuer. Another child might get lots of attention for being sickly. This may contribute to a script which embodies life-long sickness. Children growing up in a shame-based dysfunctional family may learn to experience anxiety and distress as a way of life. Later they may feel uncomfortable if things are going too well.

Family System Roles

All families have roles. The father and mother play their roles of modeling what it is to be a man or woman, father or mother. Parents also model how to be intimate, have boundaries, cope with problems, fight fair, problem solve, etc. The role of children is to be curious and to be learners. Members of a healthy family have flexible roles. Mom may be the heroine because she baked a special cake. Daughter may take over that role when she volunteers to do the dishes. Son becomes the hero when he notices smoke coming out

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of the stove and prevents a fire. Dad's the hero when he takes the family on a vacation.

I have already described the dysfunctional family system roles in some detail. Ask yourself, "How did I function in my family? What role did I play to keep the family together?"

In our Center For Recovering Families in Houston we have discovered a large number of Family System Roles in addition to the roles I've discussed.

Some other roles are Parent's Parent, Dad or Mom's Buddy, Family Counselor, Dad's Star, Mom's Star, Perfect One, Saint, Mom or Dad's Enabler, the Rascal, the Cute One, Athlete, Family Peacemaker, Family Referee, the Family Sacrifice, the Religious One, Winner, Loser, Martyr, Super-Mom, Super-Spouse, Clown, Super-Dad, Chief Enabler, Genius, Mom or Dad's Scapegoat.

We suggest that people really work at getting a feeling of the role(s) they played by putting a name on it. You may find that you played several roles.

Each role has a felt sense, and the felt sense of the role will stay with you even if you give it up. You may have been the baby. You were cute and quickly became the family Mascot. Two years later your little brother came along and knocked you out of a job. You will retain the felt sense of being a Mascot. What is important to underscore is that when we play a role, we give up our true and authentic self. The role is a false self. In dysfunctional family systems the roles are necessitated by the needs of the family system in its attempt to balance itself in the wake of the primary stressor. The primary distress may be Dad's alcoholism, Mom's pill addiction or eating disorder, Dad's violence, the incest, Mom's religious addiction, etc. Each role is a way to handle the family distress and shame. Each role is a way for each member to feel like he has some control. As one plays the role more and more — rigidity sets in. As one becomes more and more unconscious of one's true self, one's self-rupture increases. The shame which promotes the role is intensified by the role. What a paradox! The roles are necessitated by the family system's shame as ways to overcome the shame, and they in fact freeze and enhance the shame. The old French proverb applies here:

The more you try to change, the more it stays the same.

The ultimate issue about the roles is that they don't work. My being a Hero has done absolutely nothing to change my shame-based family system.

Max's playing his Scapegoat and Lost Child Role did nothing to change his family system's dysfunction.

The power of these roles for a shame-based person is their rigidity and predictability. Staying in the role gives one a sense of identity. Even the Scapegoat can have predictability, can be somebody. This is why roles are so hard to give up, especially the Hero, Caretaker, Superachiever or Star type of

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roles. They are mood-altering. One feels good being a caretaker. How could I be flawed and defective when I'm taking care of all these people?

I can remember saying this to myself when I had a counseling load of 50 people a week. What I couldn't grasp is that there is no way to change your being by your doing. The shame-based core cries out — you're flawed and defective! There's something wrong with you! All the doing in the world won't change that.

The dysfunctional family system roles are ways we lose our reality. Over a period of time the fact that we are playing a role becomes unconscious.

\ We believe we are the persona that the role calls for. We believe the role-designated feelings are our feelings. The role literally becomes addictive.