The Day I Hurt a Child follow up - Shame hiding Pride
If you weren’t there, I called-in today on Stefan Molyneux’s Sunday show regarding the post I made on Friday. He advised me to try experiencing the emotions without judging or trying to ‘calculate’ them (am I being too hard on myself? Too soft?). And he also told me that shame and guilt usually hide something else. So I tried to go deep and find out how I truly feel about this incident.
At first, I feel some sadness and sympathy. Mostly towards the two girls, because it’s not hard to deduce where they learnt to fight like that. Most likely they were abused at home and re-enacted it. I also feel a bit of sympathy for myself, since I was never taught how to deal with that kind of situation - I did what I did because it was all I knew. :-(
But taking the shame and guilt away revealed an emotion I never thought I’d have towards this memory - Pride. I’m not proud of how I treated the little girl at that moment, but I am proud that I decided not to continue down that road. I came this close to following the dark path of re-enacting my childhood abuse, and I chose not to. Not everyone would have made that choice.
