I’ve hidden my hand my whole life. I wear long sleeves and haven’t seen a doctor about it since I was a toddler. My right hand is completely normal. On my left hand, my pinky, ring, and middle fingers are normal. The issue is only with the thumb and index finger they are the same length and to the side.
It’s not painful or limiting physically but it’s always affected my confidence which is why I hide it.
I mentioned the other day that Reddit has small subs that can be intellectually stimulating. The post linked above, including many of its comments, shows what the title says. One conclusion from this is that the shame and self-induced ‘need’ to hide that shame has wide applications across all stigmatisms and psychological conditions, which often are reified as stigmatisms. By hiding shame or stigmatism we give it an overblown life of its own. By not hiding it, we remove its power to shame us. A physical stigma is simply the luck of the draw and, while someone may be to blame for it, in the end you have to live with it. Psychological abuse or trauma is not so different. At the end of the day, it’s your cross to bear. If FIML is done with this in mind, both partners can use the FIML method to gradually bite off small pieces of whatever shame or trauma or confusion they are experiencing. Doing this repeatedly, over months and years, will slowly reveal the trauma to both partners. And this will provide a wondrous level of freedom. Psychological trauma always leaves evidence in the mind much as physical abnormalities can rarely be fully corrected. Nonetheless, both conditions benefit greatly from exposure to the sunlight of objective consciousness. And this can lead to a state of unperturbedness as the stoics say or enlightenment/ nirvana as the Buddhists say. ABN
American Buddhist Net 