The Boy Who Couldn’t Read
Shame, Anxiety and Other Monsters of the Mind
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The air hung heavy, infused with warring scents of stale popcorn, aging molten nacho cheese and bowling shoe disinfectant.
Parents stood huddled around my friends and I as we showed off our new acquisitions. The birthday party was winding down, and we were all a sweaty mess — somehow simultaneously amped up and depleted from a candy-fueled frenzy of arcade games and air-hockey. One friend had snagged a mini basketball and another a stuffed animal. All I got was a dumb Kevin Bacon VHS. The mechanical claw had not been kind to me that day.
One of their parents asked what movie I’d grabbed.
“Foot-lose..?” I said tentatively. Or perhaps I said, “Foot-less..?”
I spent so much of my childhood trying to block out moments like this one that it’s hard to remember which I coughed up. What I do remember is I’d quit on the word halfway through. That’s what I did when I saw words I didn’t recognize.
“It’s Foot-loose,” my mother corrected with frustrated disdain. Her tone told me I’d embarrassed her again.
I hung my head low. I avoided everyone’s eyes and studied my sneakers. I’d learned to look away to avoid the pain I felt when I saw looks of disapproval or furrowed brows questioning the gobbledygook I’d just spewed. The shame I felt in that moment was visceral. It was a punishing, furious dark hand that reached up from my queasy belly and choked me from the inside. It left me silent, dejected, overwhelmed, and isolated.
I never even wanted that stupid VHS. If only the claw had latched onto something else, I thought, then my defect wouldn’t have been exposed. In the car ride home, she questioned me yet again: “Why can’t you just read like everyone else?”
“You’re not good enough. You are not where you should be for your age. You’re behind all your classmates. You need to try harder. There’s something wrong with you. You are defective.”
This was talk track on repeat in my mind.
Underperforming and Overwhelmed
It was the early 90s, and I was probably 10 or 11 when I stumbled in the bowling alley. It’s frozen in my memory bank, a vivid reminder of the psychological pain of my youth. I went to a nice, privileged little elementary school in Pasadena, California. I had all the resources I could ever need. My parents were Ivy school grads boasting an MBA and a law degree. My dad, a valedictorian, raced through the Sunday NYT crossword every week, in pen.
So, I was supposed to be smart too, right?
Their achievements seemed impossibly far away for a kid who couldn’t manage to puke up a few measly paragraphs in class. In class, we’d go around the room hopping from student to student, passing a book page by page, reading out loud to polish our verbal acuity. I’d silently cringe in horror as the book snaked its way around the room, growing closer and closer.
I knew if I focused on my fear I would overwhelm myself and shut down, but I couldn’t ever block out the terror of my rapidly approaching public humiliation. When it was my turn — enveloped within an invisible forcefield of anxiety and fear — I would read the page like a sputtering, backfiring car engine. I paid no attention to tone or cadence. For a kid desperate not to be held back, the task of simply pronouncing each word carried the weight of a life or death struggle.
It was like there was a short-circuit between what I saw and what came out of my mouth. When I couldn’t connect the two, I’d panic, go blank and blurt something out. I’d force out a jumble of letters and sounds I knew was wrong, just to push my way through the moment. What followed was always some form of dressing down.
Teachers wanted to help, but all I heard were infantilizing corrections, which I’d internalize and use to fertilize the seed of shame sprouting within. I knew too that I’d soon hear about my deficiencies from the quick witted, cocksure bullies during recess. As a pale, socially awkward ginger with bright orange hair, I didn’t need extra reasons to be bullied, but my very public struggles in the classroom provided a generous arsenal of ammunition.
Dissecting My Defects
Tutor after tutor scrutinized my shortcomings. I logged long hours after school. Drills during breakfast. Workbooks on the weekends. Special classes in the summer. The exercises were tedious, endless and exhausting.
During the school year, it took me hours and hours to read short assignments. This continued well into high school. It was painful labor, forcing myself through those books. I’d read and reread the same passage over and over again, desperately trying to retain the information while my mind revolted, fixated on the clock, and labeled itself as stupid.
My parents eventually took me to a kooky doctor, who dressed like a hippie and operated out of her home. Her den was filled with an eclectic mix of strange objects, games, and devices I’d never seen before. She gave me standard reading and writing tests like all the others, but she also made me do strange things like deal a deck of cards, write with my non-dominant hand or put on special sunglasses that had blinking colored lights inside.
After months of week-night visits, she handed my parents a diagnosis. Allegedly, I was never supposed to be left-handed, and I was dropped on my head as a baby. I never saw the evidence, but my parents used her loose logic and “wacky” theory to discredit her immediately. Today, based on my blend of symptoms, I’d likely be branded with a diagnostic bouquet of dyslexia and ADHD, plopped in special education classes, and pumped full of Adderall.
But what I had didn’t matter. I just wanted to be normal like everyone else. I scratched, clawed and battled my way through junior high and high school — waging an internal war against myself every school day and night. Somehow I forced myself out of my own way with sheer strength of will, endless repetition and a stubborn, never-say-never attitude.
In the end, my desperate drive to be perceived as normal simply outmatched my developmental shortcomings. This drive would dictate much of my behavior for the next few decades, as I transformed into an honors student and varsity athlete, a boundary-less people pleaser, and a ladder-climbing perfectionist at marketing agencies.
All the while, fueling that burning inferno of desire and achievement was the silent force of shame that whispered:
“You are not good enough. You are defective. If you don’t perform, others won’t like you. You’re only as good as your last achievement. What did you accomplish today?”
A Malignant Monster
My failures in reading comprehension and verbal expression had planted a bitter seed of shame deep within me. Every event like the bowling alley incident doused that sprouting seed in water and nutrients. I became hyper-vigilant for silent critiques, questioning looks and judgmental faces. Each perceived judgment about my deficiencies fueled this malignant growth.
Spreading like a cancer, my shame metastasized deep into my psyche and sucked all the nutrients from every self-esteem boosting achievement. As the years ticked by, my negative self-appraisal dictated many elements of my life. I struggled to set firm boundaries, chased self-esteem in external validation and played a chameleon to please everyone around me. It shaped how I interacted with parents and intimate partners; coaches, teachers and peers; colleagues and clients.
Every person who crossed my path became potential judge, jury, and executioner. My self-regard was so fragile that a single sideways look from a stranger could trigger an avalanche of emotions. Years of uncomfortable therapy sessions revealed I even picked partners to repeat the dynamics I’d learned in childhood. They’d either play the role of a critical judge, or, they were less accomplished and fed my desire for validation.
Under the crushing weight of my malignant shame, I turned to substance use to anesthetize my pain, negative self-regard and anxiety, which then only led to bad behavior and vicious spiral of shame and addiction. For much of my life, my internal narrative painted the world as a hostile and unforgiving place. I defined myself as a victim of forces beyond my control. I gave myself ample excuses to dive deeper and deeper into addiction.
The Psychology of Inherited Shame
What I never knew was that my mother had endured a similar pain. Every night at the dinner table her father aggressively quizzed her and her brothers about what was in the newspaper that day, belittling, and shaming them if they didn’t deliver. Her anxiety, panic and shame spread so deep that she couldn’t eat at the dinner table and became emaciated. Eventually, her parents let her eat dinner in her bedroom. Through tears, she told me the last thing she wanted was for me to struggle through the agony she endured.
I never heard her story until after she’d been hospitalized in psychiatric care units. Unfortunately, she resisted mental health care until her own trauma and shame rose up and consumed her. Today, looking back on the bowling alley incident and others, I know she didn’t want to be viewed as a substandard mother — a woman who couldn’t raise a child to perform on par with his peers. Her mother never let her forget that worry every time they spoke on the phone; it was a constant critique that re-activated her childhood trauma.
Paradoxically, her criticism of my bowling alley fumble was also intended to protect me from needing to endure this pain — but she’d unknowingly repeated the cycle. Hearing her story broke my heart; she did the best she could with what she had. In my work as a therapist, I’ve watched many clients repeat the traumas of their childhood. Sadly, as destructive as emotional neglect and abuse can be, they can also be familiar, and familiar can translate to safe.
Excavating My Secret Monster
I’ve never shared the bowling alley incident with anyone, not even my therapist. Leading shame researcher Brené Brown says that shame thrives in the darkness, silence and isolation. The antidote to its vitality-draining effects is openness, vulnerability and empathy.
This rings true to me, and I encourage my clients to practice vulnerability in the therapy groups I lead at an outpatient addiction treatment center. As my clients share their deepest, darkest moments of addiction-fueled shame, they shine a light on the malignant monster that’s been hiding and gathering strength in the recesses of their mind. With each story they share, they cut the strings and prevent shame from playing puppeteer with their emotions, behavior and relationships.
Once they finally open up about the unspeakable, they realize that they are not alone. As they progress through treatment, they typically conclude that it’s oddly more “normal” to feel like you’re abnormal. I share the bowling alley fiasco to uproot my own shame — each word breaks the spell that invisible, malignant monster cast within my mind.
I speak the words that a confused child never could. I honor the completely valid emotions my childhood self blocked out. My pain, panic, fear and shame cut deep, raw wounds, and the blood of my severed emotions spilled out across my life.
But something else is true too: Without the pain of those wounds, I wouldn’t be the resilient, creative, caring and empathic person I am today.
I tell this tale to reclaim my narrative and break the cycle of shame. I know I’m not alone.
