18.4 Worthlessness
Being ashamed of ones body is also
the subject of attention for Dagny and Gunhild. They have both been sexually
abused as children and are now users of the Incest Center
in Vestfold. They speak of their bodies as filthy and do not want to relate to
their bodies. They say that everything about the body is difficult.
Dagny: Everything
about the body is difficult. You’re either too fat or too thin; it’s like that
for everyone, too much of this or too little of that. If you also have had
someone fool around with your self-image, it gets even worse. Shame, body and
sexuality are very closely interwoven with each other… ((Nods her head))
(.) An emotional block (.) in your body which comes when intimate parts
are touched, you don’t show (.) the
proper (.) ((Waves her hands and
laughs)) reaction that you should because
you’re not, because you’re not as fond of your body as you could have been.
Gunhild: I
feel like shit…I’m filthy…I don’t care about my body; I don’t want to relate to
my body.
Kaare: Is
that a form of shame?
Gunhild: Yeah,
I think so.
Kaare: Are
you ashamed of your body?
Gunhild: Yeah.
Dagny shows, in my opinion, that her
body is difficult to talk about and shows paralinguistic markers (appendix 20)
of shame by having several breaks in her sentence when she speaks of having her
intimate parts touched by her abuser and at the same time laughs of the abuse. Johnson
(2006) argues that this feeling of ones body being filthy, as Dagny and Gunhild
have spoken about, has to do with feeling worthless and argues that at the most
severe level of shame, we are afraid of any kind of self-expression because to
be seen is to be seen as dirty, disgusting, worthless, and unlovable. To be
seen by others can even sometimes be felt as putting ones whole extinction in
danger. The only security lies in withdrawal and isolation because everyone
seems knows or sees that one is completely worthless.
Ellen is also one of the users of
the Incest Centre who speaks about being ashamed of her body. She argues that the
picture of an ideal body in our modern society is that everything is supposed
to be perfect, and she sees her body as ugly and disgusting. She also speaks of
being tortured as a child; being beaten with a branch on her back and on the
soles of her feet. This has resulted in a scratching obsession where she
scratches everything that hurts or seems disgusting until she starts to bleed.
Ellen: I’m ashamed of my body ((Looks down at the floor))…I wish I could have another body…Shame.
Everything is supposed to be so perfect. My body is ugly and disgusting. I can
see it in the way others stare at me. I can sit and scratch my back till I
start to bleed. I have sores all over the place. Try to scratch away everything
that hurts, disgusting and awful, in a way.
Kaare: Why
do you scratch your back?
Ellen: XXX, he was one of my abusers. He hit me a lot. I remember him standing
there with a branch from a willow tree in his hands. I even had to fetch the
branch myself. I just remember the branch swinging through the air and hitting
my back. He didn’t stop until I started to bleed. I’ve got big scars on by
back. I scratch and scratch and scratch because it hurts. I was punished, but I
hadn’t done anything wrong. I could come home five minutes too late for dinner,
especially if he was drunk. He could whip the bottom of my feet so hard that I
couldn’t stand up afterwards. He hit the soles of my feet often. He did things
like that, and then there was also all the abuse. My body developed quite
early, with breasts and things. When I think back, I always had to sit on his
lap while he hugged and kissed me and he put his hands on my breasts. He also
abused my cousin from the time she was four till she was seventeen. My parents knew
about it and, hell, they let me stay with him for two weeks every damned summer
anyway. Maybe they thought that he wouldn’t do anything to me. I don’t know.
I’ve never got an answer to that…I also scratch myself to take away some pain.
I scratch myself till I get sores from it, they look like wounds you have after
being burned, they feel wet and moist ((Points to her shoulders)) and then I continue by using a hairbrush
I’ve bought especially for that purpose ((Laughs)) and it gets pretty ugly after a while. But this here inner pain I feel
so strongly, it is overwhelmed by a physical pain that hurts like hell…I
remember the branch flying through the air and hitting my back. It started to
bleed. That’s why I have all these scars on my back.
Ellen’s body was abused; hit,
abused, tortured. She continues abusing her body by scratching her skin with
her fingernails or with a hairbrush. Margaret also feels that her body was abused,
tortured, when she was a child. As a child she thought that she was to blame
for the way others treated her body; there was something wrong with her body.
Margaret_1: My
feelings are that my umm body was abused, used in an umm wrong, wrong, way. Sometimes
I was tortured also. That made me think ((Points to her head)) that there must (.) be something wrong with my body that caused this to happen.
Margaret goes on to say that her
shame lies in her body. Her self-value diminishes when she relates to her body.
Living with a body she does not like is sometimes difficult and says that this
is because her body has been used in many different ways. She tries to distinguish
between who she is as a person and what her body is. This makes it possible for
her to accept herself, without having to accept her body. She has placed her
sexual abuse in her body. Talking about this makes her cry and she hides her
face behind her hands, something that might indicate that she feels shame when
speaking about her body (appendix 20). Margaret is an employee at the Incest Center
and still has to work with her relation to her body.
Margaret: When
it comes to my body, then I lose my self-esteem. If I can remain neutral about
my body, then I can manage (.), but
if someone makes a comment about how I look, then (.) I have to work a lot with that kind of thing ((Holds up her hand
and makes a line in the air at neck level)) Yeah.
I don’t like my body.
Kaare: Is
that difficult?
Margaret: ((Nods her head)) Sometimes yes ((Starts to cry and holds her hands in front of her
face)), sometimes it’s difficult and
sometimes not. There’s been so much that this here body has been through. It’s
been used in so many ways. ((Holds her hand under her chin)) And my shame lies in my body… I want to be
me, not my body. I’m working with the idea that I’m not my body, I’m much more.
That helps me a lot in accepting myself. I’m more than my body. All of my
experiences lie in my body. All of my abuse lies there.
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