Is Trump showing us just how intensely debilitating it is to carry deep unprocessed and unresolved shame? Is this what is happening on the big stage for us these days?
Reflections on Cohen testimony. I tuned into today’s testimony, and it is dawning on me, maybe it’s obvious, but that the profile of Trump, as brought into greater living color by Cohen, is that Trump is run by a profoundly debilitating obsession with escaping from deep levels of shame. He will do anything to look bigger, richer, greater and that he is absolutely driven to avoid his deep shame, by any means necessary. His wanting to build the biggest building in Europe, The Moscow Trump Hotel, that was more and more criminal as he pursues it even during the campaign. He sells a picture of himself that is the most expensive sale at the auction that day because he, through Cohen, set it up to pay the buyer back after the sale just so he can boast about how valuable his portrait was. “Narcissism” is rooted ultimately in deep shame. His obsession with the big wall as his legacy. His obsession that his inaugural audience was bigger than anybody else’s. Inflating his personal wealth by billions. He is fearful that he will look dumb or that he can’t read very well. It is like he is totally consumed with running in the other direction from his shame. It is like he is intensely hurting but he acts out (hates on everybody else) instead of working through it. His chronic lies he can’t help because it is so engrained in him to deflect any hint of his shame. As a therapist, I wonder how he survived a father who berated him to his core, where such a profound state of deep shame came to interfere with a normal standard of functioning as an adult. This man is so debilitated by this, affecting everything. This is why his psyche is the main thing going on in his presidency. He can’t do much else.
SO… what if Trump had a revelation that he was ok just the way he was, no matter the size, the accomplishments, the bank account? What if he had a catharsis of his shame, showing up to be felt, and expressed where true healing could occur? We are a forgiving loving people when it comes down to it. What if Trump had a metanoia, a turn around to where he was embraced with true love by others to where he could once again feel vulnerable and authentic. What if Cohen’s own catharsis of self reflection could help Trump do the same? What if his whole presidency then became one based on unconditional love towards each person for just how they are and policies oriented to helping each to flourish.
And may this happen to me as well.
Here we have how the dynamics of wounding, based on age difference (Trump’s fathers emotional brutality) is core to the perpetuation of the patriarchy. Trump was born not a patriarch, not a racist, not a misogynist, he was forged to be this in the crucible of his family system.
Radical healing and change occurs in this territory.
Dialectics of Age 