Editor’s note: This piece contains discussion of sexual assault and related trauma.
Image: ‘JNemchinova’, Canva (Single-use License)
I had a book come out last month about shame. It’s about my own shame—the shame I have carried ever since I was sexually abused as a child and told no one, the shame I carried after I was raped on a night out as a teenager and told no one—and it’s about other peoples’ shame. It is made up of interviews with people of marginalised genders all around the world; it is, I hope, a polyphonic memoir about what a life can look like when it is defined or derailed by shame, and how we can and do recover.
But writing about shame is something of a paradox. By putting my shame into words, I am indicating that I have overcome it. The trope of the honest, vulnerable memoir that does not shy away from difficult subjects seems, in some ways, to require that you have come out the other side by the time the book is published. That is, at least, what the publishing industry so often wants to see and so often rewards: the sad girl who wrote a book about her sadness as a way to find absolution—and who, crucially, is willing to stand in front of a room full of people and talk about the worst things that have ever happened to her.
There are a few tensions here. The first is that we are expected to promote our books to the world with a combination of both vulnerability and invulnerability—vulnerability in putting our experiences on the page but invulnerability in pretending we can go out and talk about that project without feeling the constant sting of exposure, rejection and fear. The second, which is implicated in the first, is that this means any vulnerability used to sell books is in fact, to some degree, a performance. It is a performance of not-performing.
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In his book Healing the Shame that Binds You, John Bradshaw writes that when our lives get overtaken by chronic shame, we create a ‘false self’ to present to the world, one that we think is worthy.
As the false self is formed, Bradshaw writes, the authentic self goes into hiding. The false self is a masterpiece. Because the false self is an act of overcompensation for a part of us we believe to be damaged, it is always more-than-human or less-than-human. ‘It is crucial to see that the false self may be as polar opposite as a super-achieving perfectionist or an addict in an alley,’ he writes.
We are expected to promote our books with a combination of vulnerability and invulnerability—vulnerability in putting our experiences on the page but invulnerability in pretending we can talk about that project without fear.
Every story in my book is about how we learn the value of the false self, how we unlearn it, and the price we pay trying to attain it. It is about trying to overcome the false self; the version of myself I have built around my obsession—born from trauma—with other peoples’ approval. And yet a necessary part of writing that book is promoting it—and therefore asking for people’s approval. Book reviews, Instagram likes, complimentary tweets. I understand why this is important—publicising a book is how we connect with readers, and connecting with readers is the greatest joy of my life. But it does create a tension in me—I need to try and find a way to resist the temptation to let the performance of vulnerability not pull me back into reliance on external validation.
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One afternoon in June last year, my therapist brought up the fact that I had found an excuse to cancel our session every other week.
‘I think there is a part of you that is still so afraid to be seen clearly by anyone,’ she said.
I stayed silent for a moment, unsure what to say.
‘You are willing to be seen by me,’ she continued, ‘but only when you feel able to curate yourself first. Only when you know you can say smart things and dutifully recount your week and encourage me when I make an observation that is accurate, only when you can be helpful and pliant and pleasant.
‘This way, you are always in control. On the other days, you find an excuse to hide from me. You can’t bear it.’
She was absolutely right. I have worked so hard at expelling my own shame, but its grip is still suffocating. This woman, the person who knows more about me than anyone ever has, was still being presented a false version of me. I was still curating myself for her in order to hide the things I’m ashamed of. She was seeing my false self.
In some ways, publicising a book about the danger of the false self requires you to inhabit it.
At first, I felt so panicked when my therapist said this. I felt exposed, which in my mind is linked to danger. But being seen and being bad are not the same thing. My therapist was not criticising me for cancelling our sessions—she was accepting this avoidance as part of my suffering, and she was trying to help me.
In that room, and only in that room, I believed that I did not have to be perfect—that is, false—in order to be worthy of love.
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Since that day, I have been committed to unwinding the false self, to allow myself to be seen when I am not performing. In some ways, publicising a book about the danger of the false self requires you to inhabit it. These past few weeks, I have been asked to film videos of myself talking about the book, write articles about the book, and go on television to talk about the book. All of which I am very grateful for, all of which I signed up for. But at the same time, these appearances require me to curate myself in exactly the way my therapist was talking about—not necessarily because the media or the publishing industry demands this, but because my own shame does.
No matter how much I try and write my way out of shame, I still live with it, and it with me. And it seems to come out most powerfully when I have to be observed by an audience, have to be seen—which is always when I am promoting my book.
When I go on Instagram and smile and promote my book I am embodying a version of myself—but an old one. I am embodying, often, the traumatised girl who craves external validation and approval in order to make herself feel real, the girl who believes she is worthless and so paints on her face and her smile to hide herself away.
I don’t think there is a way around the performance of vulnerability, this performing not-performing, in an age where book sales are driven by personality, so I don’t have a solution, but I think it’s worth acknowledging the tension.
Because here’s how I really feel about my book. When I really think about the feelings I express in my writing, sometimes I burst into tears. Sometimes it makes me throw up into the toilet bowl and sit shaking on the bathroom floor. I am terrified of this book—when I speak about it publicly, the urge to surrender myself to the bathroom tiles is even stronger. And yet, still, something drives me to get up the next day and do it all again.
And here’s another thing about how I really feel: some days I do not want to speak about the worst things that have ever happened to me. Some days I want to watch Love Island and read novels and not think about myself at all. Some days I want to let the book stand on its own and speak for itself so that I no longer have to. But it seems that in an age of packaging up female sadness, there is an expectation that I will be able and willing to tear myself open and show you my wounds at any moment.
In an age of packaging up female sadness, there is an expectation that I will be able and willing to tear myself open and show you my wounds at any moment.
Once again, it is never my publishers or publicists who are pushing me to do anything—it is me. It is the part of me that believes I have to perform in order to be accepted, but it is also a culture that rewards the performance.
I am under no illusion here: to be rewarded for the performance is a privilege, and is so often attached to whiteness. As writer Leslie Jamison observed in the New York Times, sad-girl stardom is too often afforded only to ‘the young, beautiful, white afflicted woman: our favourite tragic victim, our repository of rarefied, elegiac sadness.’
The fact that I have a platform on which to perform my pain is the result of a constellation of privileges. I am the kind of woman people feel comfortable talking about rape with, because I make it palatable. In some ways, sadness itself is a privilege steeped in whiteness—in other mouths, it is often interpreted as anger, or resentment, or ‘crazy’, or violent.
On the other hand, women (and non-binary people, though I cannot speak for them) are expected to do more emotional labour in the performance of non-performing, expected to expose more of themselves, than male writers. Men are often given the luxury of distance from their work—not always asked to delve into their personal worlds connected to their writing (or lauded as barrier-breakers when they do), and instead asked about craft, and prose, and art.
On the other hand, when women write about ourselves, and in particular about our trauma—even when we do so as a wedge to examine the world—we are accused of being self-centred, attention-seeking, or worse: opportunistic.
The writer Kath Kenny writes, disparagingly, ‘In this era of baring all, to gain attention one must disclose tales that are either titillating, traumatising or some messed up mix of both. We’ve created an attention economy that tells people, particularly young and female people, that the most interesting and valuable thing about you is the worst thing that has ever happened to you.’
The implication here is that writing and speaking about trauma is self-serving—but this is not an accusation I ever hear levelled at male writers. It’s also just not true.
I don’t have a solution—other than keep showing up to therapy until I can separate my shame from my writing, and not inhabit my false self when I am called upon to talk about my book.
One of the observations I make in my book is: my whole life has been either a paradox or a performance. This particular aspect of my life—performing vulnerability to promote my book—is both.
My Body Keeps Your Secrets is available now at your local independent bookseller.
