Destructive life needs to change

Dear Nikki,

What I hear most from your letter is how much shame you feel for all the things that you have done. Shame is a feeling of being deeply and hopelessly flawed inside. This is an emotion that I don't feel is valid. I am not saying that you haven't behaved in ways that have hurt yourself and others tremendously. You have and I don't want to minimize it in the least. However, we are more than just our recent behavior. Many people have screwed up a number of years of their youth and pulled it together enough to live productive and fulfilling lives. Shame is the feeling of not being good enough while guilt is knowing that our behavior has been poor, but we are still valuable as a person.

There are two ways to reduce shame. One is to lower your expectations of yourself and look realistically about the futility of trying to be perfect and seeing things in terms of behavior over time and not about personhood. The second way is to really take a look at your behavior and raise your standards in this area. There is no possible way that you or others are really going to be able to respect you if you are in the sex industry or doing drugs. These are basically ways to get intensity into your life to drown out the feelings of shame. It never works well and therefore more drugs and sex have to be added on to keep the shame down further.

The question I think you need to ask yourself is how to give yourself the best chance of turning your life around. With all of the drugs you have been doing I would seriously suggest a 30-day inpatient chemical dependence hospital. This would give you the most comprehensive help to stabilize and be safe medically. Afterwards, I would suggest a 12-step program and outpatient therapy once a week for between six months to a year. I realize that that had to be a shock to you, but the seriousness of the problem warrants it. A further reason that I am suggesting this route is I always get suspicious that people who are using a lot of drugs are often self-medicating a hidden emotional or psychiatric disorder such as depression or attention deficit disorder. There is no way to find this out accurately without being off the drugs for a couple of months and this is more likely to occur in an inpatient setting.

Nikki, although you say that your early home life was supportive and satisfying, it sounds as if there had to be early abandonment if your dad wasn't around and your mother kicked you out at 15. I have worked extensively with escorts and dancers and 95% of them have been abused in their early childhood and usually there is a sexual component to the abuse. There are exceptions but I certainly wonder if this might be part of your problem. When people are abused they decide they are bad people and then spend a significant part of their life trying to prove to themselves that their abusers were right about them. You have been doing so much in your life that it sure would make sense if it were subconsciously purposeful behavior.

Whatever you do don't lose hope. People change their lives all the time. It takes hard work and commitment, but it can be done. I believe that people are basically good and only get into trouble by a series of pain and self-hate.

Good luck,

Jef Gazley