the SHAME game
For the longest time I’ve felt under intense pressure to be “OK”. It wasn’t always this way. Growing up in Melbourne in the 1980s, I hadn’t a worry in the world. Everything was OK. In fact, I didn’t know what not being OK even looked like. My life was full of joy.
Then one day, everything changed. I’ll never forget the sad figure of my dad hunched over at the kitchen sink, sobbing as he washed the dishes. Mum had her arm around him as tears ran down her cheeks, too. My little sister, Georgia, had stopped eating at the age of 14 as a result of mental illness. Those parental tears heralded the first time I realised that things could actually be not OK.
As the catastrophe engulfed our family, Mum and Dad invested their every effort in Georgia’s recovery. They told themselves it was their responsibility to make sure she got better.
Meanwhile, I was having a different inner conversation – a toxic and foolhardy one. I told myself that I had to be OK. In fact, I believed I had to be more than OK. I felt as though I had to be a constant source of joy to everyone around me.
Ultimately, Georgia recovered from anorexia but, for my part, I never quite came through the other side. I continued to cling to the belief that I had to make everyone I met feel happy. Always and at all costs.
While this, in part, led me to
