There's a lot of talk about unlearning shame - or at least the online worlds' I walk through seem to be interested in this topic. My therapist brought the topic up to me a few weeks ago. And I started reading a classic book about shame. I'm still only 1/2 through, but I'm trying to not feel bad about that.
I'm ashamed about Japanese. I've spent 8 years of my life learning it. I've lived in Japan for 2 years. I can't articulate myself with any grace, and I'm too scared to speak most days. This gets worse every day. Not my Japanese - that slowly gradually improves. But my shame about it worsens. I've spent 1/3 of my life with it now, and I still feel so lacking. I rationalise it to myself - I can read excellently, and my listening is good most of the time. But 8 years? And sometimes I still struggle to order coffee. I know the problem, really. It has nothing to do with the language and my fears of embarassment, shame, and judgement. I have a big history of these things and they cloud my brain before I get the chance to produce a sentence. In the few times I've felt safe enough to speak - I ended up being pretty coherent. And on days where my confidence is flying high I can get my words out easily enough. But the general locks on my heart and voice lead to a general lack of daily communication, which causes stagnation. Studying Japanese at all can make me feel bad now. It used to make me feel free and fresh. Now it reminds me of how much time I've lost. I think the shame around this causes me to look away from it. I focus on other things that are easier to improve than this speech issue (really an emotional issue). I always feel lacking. I'm not good enough. I haven't read enough books, I haven't delved further enough into the canon of critically appraised movies, games, music. I haven't made worthwhile art, I don't know the technical know-how, I haven't released music for too long. I always feel like I'm behind, and need to catch up. Of course this isn't just my head - culture is designed to make us feel lacking, and social media shows us aspirational figures who HAVE read all the good books, who HAVE secured their canon of media, who HAVE all the technical know-how on music. I think my obsessions come from this root cause really. I want to obsessively do something, or finish something, so that at least 'that' is over. I accomplished it, and I can move on to the next subject in this long list of checkboxes I wrote in order to feel worthwhile. So instead of tackling this issue at its core, unlearning shame, and speaking my mind in Japanese, I focus my time on the easier problems - finishing a book in a day, writing music, or beating a game with ALL my free time. If I can finish it quick enough, I get a sense of accomplishment out of it. And I feel proud.
And sometimes I'm too much - my body is too big, my voice too loud or weird. My sweat, my clothes. My existence is too much - when others are there to judge it. I fear judgement so much.
I just got off my Japanese class - an hour of free conversation. I feel an urge to blame myself for how it went - I didn't communicate strong enough my desire to be corrected, perhaps. But then again, it's clear he enjoyed talking a lot by himself - and I fell into the usual "un un un !" habit as is wont to do from a language learners' standpoint. I'll try someone else next time. But from my experience it was clear that I struggled to even put the sentence together. I stumbled over half phrases, trying to fit some disjointed false starts into a meaning and hoping that on the other side of the finish line, he'd pick up what I was struggling to carry. Perhaps simply writing via text, with time on my side, would help first. To wrap myself more around the structure of the language. How I'm supposed to weild this unyieldy sword. For now. I'm happy I did this, I'm proud for showing up and giving it a good shot.