‘Where Does It Hurt?’
On shame and the body
I’m really proud of this song "Where Does It Hurt?' and I want to give it its best shot to reach the ears of people that need to hear it. There are a couple of definite influences for the song which I’ve talked about quite a bit: the initial inspiration being Ruby Sales’ interview on the ‘On Being’ podcast and more generally the work and words of Brené Brown especially around empathy and shame.
But, as well as these, this song is about my own experience of shame
and what happens when you don’t deal with it, what happens to your
body.
I came out nearly 20 years ago, after a sudden epiphany that I might
possibly fancy a female friend of mine. I was euphoric (and most
probably clinically manic) for a while following this revelation. And
then shame struck me, literally. Very suddenly, I was totally unable to
move my hands for 2 weeks (which, for a practical musician on a music
degree is bad news). It was like they were frozen in place.
My GP put it down to stress and I was ordered to rest and relax. My
family doctor was brilliant and a little bit alternative in his methods
and suggested Intra Muscular Stimulation on the muscles in my back
(which is like DEEP acupuncture in to your muscles) and amazingly it
resolved the issue almost as quickly as it started. Friends and family
were sceptical, I was sceptical, trying to understand why my hands
should be fine, then suddenly and completely stop functioning for a
period, and then resume normal functioning. Following that strange
episode, my mental health became my primary health concern.
Perhaps you’re wondering “Where does shame figure in all this?”
When I was growing up, I didn’t know anyone who was openly gay until
maybe my teens when a few friends came out and there were whispered
rumours about a couple of teachers (some of my favourite teachers, as it
happened) but remember this was still the time of Section 28. I had no
issue having friends who were gay but I did not even consider it a
possibility that I was. It just wasn’t an option in my mind. Every book I
read, every song I loved, every TV programme, every film, every
magazine represented romantic, adult-love between a man and a woman.
Systemic heteronormativity, if you will.
The only role model I had was k d lang (oh, thank Gaia!) whose music I
loved and who looked a bit how I thought I might look when I was older –
but I didn’t even know she was gay at the time. And I thought I wanted
to fit in and be normal and I understood that to mean getting married in
a white dress to a man. At 17, a friend lent me Written On The Body by
Jeanette Winterson (I think she was trying to give me a gentle nudge)
which was the first time I intellectually considered the idea of being
gay. But again, I couldn’t see how it would apply to me because that was
not my expectation, not when you’ve had 17 years of heteronormativity.
Representation matters!
So, when I eventually came out, it just didn’t fit in my world view –
I had nothing to attach my new self too – no map, no landmarks, no
footsteps to walk in. It blew my mind. I had to reconfigure my settings.
Update my operating system. Indeed, I nearly had an entire system
failure.
Without articulating it openly at the time, being gay felt wrong,
felt bad, it wasn’t what I wanted or what I thought I should be. And
that feeling of ‘being bad’ is the shame I talk of. It is invisible
until you shine a light on it. I have no doubt that this shame was a
major trigger for my years of poor mental health.
Fast forward to 2017 and the thing that happened to my hands nearly
20 years previously, happened in a much more dramatic way to my legs.
They suddenly wouldn’t function. I thought I was dying (not totally
unusual for me!) and I ended up in hospital for a week having all the
tests and eventually being given a diagnosis of Functional Neurological
Disorder (FND) – but that’s a whole other story and not for now.
We try and separate body and mind in to these distinct separate
medical pathways but they are so interlinked and interdependent. What
happens in the mind affects the body (see above) and vice versa. And if
you ignore shame, it will find a way to manifest itself in your body and
mind.
So that, dear listener, is what this song’s about!
Pre-save the song on Spotify here: https://show.co/QiKPkZi
Ruby Sales’ ‘On Being’ Interview: https://onbeing.org/programs/ruby-sales-where-does-it-hurt/
and Ruby’s http://www.spirithouseproject.org/
Brené Brown: https://brenebrown.com/ and ‘Empathy’ animation by The RSA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw
Functional Neurological Disorder (FND): https://www.neurosymptoms.org