The Un-Shame Spiral

I recently did something very brave, very powerful. Behold: I deleted Instagram.

To be fair, I obviously didn’t delete it completely - as I post and share my blog content from Instagram, so thank you for not deleting it so you can see this. I just removed it from the home screen on my phone to decondition myself from scrolling. I’d been considering it for a while to try to shape up my Menty H, but I officially hit my breaking point in mid-October when my entire FYP catalogued only content of war in the Middle East. Mean girls & incels posing as “nice guys” were posting the trendiest memes on it they could find - most certainly people who had never strung the letters G-A-Z-A together in their life, or heretofore thought it was the name of an appetizer you order before expensive sushi. But I digress.

Frankly, I’d never walked away from a scroll on Instagram feeling good; it always left me feeling inadequate. I wasn’t doing enough, traveling enough, having enough friends, etc. But 5 months out from removing the app, I asked myself: was Instagram the problem?

Let’s be fucking for real – I’ve been nursing unwelcome feelings of inadequacy for as long as I could remember.

The hard truth is that I am constantly evaluating myself against ever-changing and ever-expanding criteria - that only I continue to set for myself. And it’s fucking exhausting, because I sincerely love myself very much, but my mind just loses control of the narrative to a rogue brain-brigade spewing self-hating propaganda without my damn consent. I harmlessly walk out my front door in an outfit that I like, and suddenly my inner brain tyrants trample each other to reach their seats, review their playbills of my deepest insecurities, and await their opportunity to strategically boo and heckle my hardest attempts at being a good me today.

For example, I set out to write this blog regularly - the goal was to post every other Thursday.  But I didn’t do that. My day job got oppressively busy, and then it got oppressively cold, and everything felt oppressive - even a hobby that brings me joy. So I wallowed in my own self-inflicted-disappointment that turned to self-loathing, and voila, spiral inbound: I haven’t written enough; I’ll never write anything good again; and on that note, I didn’t make a strong enough impact on that work meeting this morning; and I also held the door for that person weirdly; I ate faster than everyone at the table; I have too many wrinkles on my forehead; I didn’t read the book I bought; I should have called my mom this week, I wasn’t a good enough friend, or partner, employee, daughter, dog-mom, citizen walking across the damn street, and everyone knows it. Fuck. It’s endless. It's a merciless thought-militia of my own making that inflicts upon me the scariest fear: that no matter what I do, there is something just inherently, unequivocally wrong with me. 

Here I was thinking I was deleting Instagram to kick a social media addiction, but the real addiction I had was to shame.

Shame… I thought. What an ugly word. How could I feel shame? It may seem juvenile or obvious, but acknowledging I felt shame was a challenge for me. Despite all of the blows I’ve thrown at myself in this discussion, I love who I am, I show up as her every time, and I preach on it. So admitting I was a victim of my own shame-crimes felt like a betrayal of my own integrity. But, shame is a sinister bitch. We are not born intrinsically feeling shame; shame is learned. It lurks in the background until it is completely rooted in your mental coding, regularly influencing your very stream of thought, until you are comfortable living with its corrosive presence.  In fact, my shame-representative was as present at my brain’s Round-Table of cells as any other sensation in my body. I felt I am hungry as deeply and as instinctually as I felt I am a piece of shit. Let that sink in – I needed validation like I needed food.

But once I identified shame as the culprit trying to poison my otherwise healthy self-esteem, I was ready to face it. I first faced shame by journaling to discover what exactly made me feel shame, or what my shame triggers are. This is a critical, but horribly painful step lol; in other words, a cutie, girly, you-project. :) But it’s integral to understand what hurts you, so that you can see it coming from a mile away. You have to familiarize yourself with your opponent. And then once you can foresee its arrival, you can take control of that rising emotion & send it in the right direction. Yes, we all know the Wicked Witch of the West - the Shame Spiral; please allow me to introduce you to Glinda, the Good Witch, the Un-Shame Spiral. 

***Quick preface, I am not a mental health professional or expert. In fact, I am indeed someone very much in need of seeing a mental health professional or expert lol. Do not take anything I say as advice or fact. This is just my silly coping mechanism that I use when I feel my mind veering to the cunt side of the road. Take what you want or don’t, none of this is that serious. In the wise words of Ina Garten: this is what I do, you can do whatever the fuck you want to do, and I’m just having fun here. :) ***

Behold: (pushes hair out of the way, and rolls up sleeves) the Un-Shame Spiral: (n) an exercise  to employ when one begins to feel shame/embarrassment/worthlessness that is defined by an intentional redirection of energy that targets a positive outcome. I’ll demonstrate with an example of a recent shame trigger that I caught and slayed in real time.

A few months ago, I ran into past congregants of my old synagogue that I knew when I was growing up. They are about thrice my age. I politely asked about their families, their lives, etc. They proceeded to ask if I remembered a certain Passover seder I went to at age 13 where I was “such a brat” because I wanted to go to the movies with a boy instead. “Do you remember that? I would have never tolerated my girls acting that way but I guess there are different rules for a Rabbi’s Kid. You were such a brat.”

I was shocked. Not only did I not remember that, but also throughout my childhood, I’d worked tirelessly to defy the stereotype of a Rabbi’s Kid. In fact, I worked hard to gain the approval of adults around me - thinking I was a part of an elaborate mechanism keeping my dad employed. I’d skip sleepovers for Shabbat services, sat in the front row and prayed my very best, went to synagogue with my boobs taped flat so my body didn’t offend, smiled and hugged grown adults I overheard talking shit about my family, stayed silent at Youth Group events when their kids would boast how their parents helped get my dad fired, wiped my own parents’ tears inside a foreclosing house we’d move to for this job, etc. For the sake of these adults, I spent my childhood trying to prove I was mature. And in 2024, I’m now 27, standing there with my husband, a salary, and a fucking smile, but all these congregants can remember is the one 2007 Passover that I acted my age. I let them finish talking as I got lost in a memory of that same 13-year-old shedding tears over their surveillance & scrutiny, worrying I would never be good enough. And here was the proof that I wasn’t. 

I politely ended the interaction & went to the restroom. I felt my mind beginning to race towards a destination I knew all too well – a museum lined with artifacts boasting everything I did wrong, everyone I disappointed. But instead, I stopped myself & started to laugh. Hysterically. 

I thought: What am I so afraid of here? That these adults at one time in my life watched me behave like a child? When I was, indeed, a child? Oh my fucking god - alert the media! Alert the police!! Alert Langley’s Special Ops in the CIA!!! Radio Check one, two - The energy of a suburban Passover Seder 15 years ago was compromised by a young teenager’s attitude - brunette, female, 4’11, wearing a purple velvet zip-up hoodie, labeled “Juicy.” Yes, Commander, that’s correct, please withdraw resources from counterterrorism efforts and shift focus to teenage optics, specifically Lennick comma Sarah text intelligence, including but not limited to: what is Hot or Not List Springhouse Middle School Boys, what is Jonas Brothers, what is Y=MX+B, what is Team Edward, what is “do you like me,” what is  “gtg, grounded no phone.” Do you copy? Over. 

Like damn Congregants 1 and 2, I was 13 and you were certainly over 50 at the time, were my teenage mood swings so threatening to the integrity of your Seder that you’ve remembered it after 15 years? Did the Kugel wilt, too? Have the Jews ever experienced a worse plight? 

And look, you may be thinking: Sarah, lighten up, relax, the congregants were just trying to be funny and searching for a connection in running into you again. Maybe, but the point is not about their intentions in speaking to me; the point is that I had my own intentions in how I spoke to myself after. Whether it was reasonable or not, that was a shame-trigger for me. And instead of wallowing into my own personal brand of self-hatred, I actively, in real-time, spiraled out of shame and into humor. And I recognize that humor is not a clinically-acclaimed emotional regulation tactic, but in my opinion, there is no greater natural elixir for pain than a good fucking laugh. 

So the goal is simple: you try to un-shame the spiral. Spiral into something that serves you. Spiral into somewhere that reminds you who you are.  That day, it was humor. But it can be anything - spiral into a project, into a list of your favorite things about you, into a workout, into an orgasm, into a journal segmenting everything you’ve accomplished, into a loud & relentless rendition of Defying Gravity in the shower, into anything other than shame. Except drugs – probably stay away from those lol. This morning, I ricocheted shame into a blessing-spiral when I tried on a dress I bought 6 months ago and it no longer fit right - I first thought: Why is my body so unflattering? And then I spiraled into: how fucking lucky am I that my boobs grew? Some spend thousands and I get to just eat! I am the luckiest girl in the fucking world and everything works out for me! Rejoice! I recognize it may sound silly in theory, but in practice, it is very effective. Like everything, our minds run on momentum - steer yours in the right direction. 

And it’s ironic that my entire shame-exorcism started with Instagram – an app where everyone appears so confident. Myself included. So I guess this is just a reminder that if you have brain-tyrants from time to time that suck the you-ness out of your day, you’re not alone. We all make mistakes and are fighting shame sequences in our own ways, mostly silently. But I hope that this is a small offering on how to take steps out of what can sometimes feel like an uncontrollable storm, and to trust that we're all taking cover together.

And sure, will I still hurt my own feelings from time to time? Absofuckinglutely. I’m only human, but I refuse to live any more days, any more moments believing that any part of me is fundamentally insufficient. I’m the most important person in my own life - I don’t need to prove to myself, or anyone else for that matter, that I’m good enough in it. I only get one short time with this body that curated these passions, talents, gifts, relationships, moments that only I can access all at once for right now. No one else gets to drink this perfectly blended cocktail of me - why wouldn't I drink it all up? How lucky am I that the universe blended me together?

And in case I ever forget, as we all do, thank you to my circle for reminding me. I'm lucky the universe spiraled me into you.

With olives, Sar