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Why I’m Not Good Enough: My Dirty Gay Secret
There’s a lot of gay shame that runs as an undercurrent in my life.
This morning I watched a video by coach Dax Moy. He was talking about the difference between guilt and shame.
- Guilt is how you feel about what you did or didn’t do.
- Shame is how you feel about who you are or who you are not.
A light clicked on, illuminating something that’s been a challenge for me all my life.
I have shame around becoming successful.
What? But the success I envision for myself hasn’t happened yet.
That does seem stupid, doesn’t it. But I get it now. I understand how I’ve been blocking myself. I see how I’ve boxed myself in from experiencing and sharing what makes me fucking awesome and unique.
My shame is that I’m not good enough.
It seems simple enough. A random person on the street might say, “Dude, get over it.”
It is and it isn’t that simple, and here’s why.
Sure, I can analyze my shame and talk about it intellectually. I can tell myself that I shouldn’t be ashamed of what I know, my skills, gifts, knowledge, ability, empathy, love, etc.
I can look at my mindset and agree that, yes, I do have a growth mindset. Nothing fixed and blocked in my brain about success. My pre-frontal cortex is onboard and ready to rock success!
But shame is a feeling. And shame runs deep like a water table under the surface of the ground. It’s always been there, untapped and undrained.
Shame sleeps in the unconscious. When woken, the more ancient, mammalian brain does whatever it can to make me feel comfortable, secure, and safe from not feeling good enough.
My shame of not feeling good enough comes from being gay.
As early as five I knew I was different. Something told me I was looking through the eyes of an outsider, an observer of life, and the conditions I’d have to bear witness to in silence.
In grade two I had a crush on Ted, but I didn’t know what that meant. I wanted…
