http://blogs.forbes.com/kiriblakele...nt-sing-part-2/

It seems clear that Shania’s singing problem has a lot to do with her refusal to express what must be devastatingly painful emotions. Given her hard-scrabble, poverty stricken childhood and her traumatic early adulthood—wherein she had to raise her young siblings after her parents suddenly died in a car crash—it’s little wonder that Shania has willed herself into an unemotive ball of steel.

In an effort to learn how to better handle her emotions, Shania visits author and psychiatrist Dr. Gordon Livingston, who lost two sons, one to suicide and the other to leukemia. He gives her a brief counseling session in her trailer, and offers up the somewhat dubious advice that she needs to forgive “not just the other person, but forgiveness of yourself as well for having made this mistake.”

While I agree that Shania needs to work on forgiving herself—victims often take on a heaping helpful of blame no matter how much it’s undeserved—I wouldn’t characterize the betrayal as Shania’s “mistake.” Livingston also tells Shania she needs to take “responsibility” for “misjudging” her husband and her friend. Huh?

With all due respect, this is where Dr. Livingston and I wildly diverge. I see what happened to Shania as the emotional equivalent of being struck head on by a drunk driver. No one would characterize the victim of this type of crime as having made a “mistake” or needing to take “responsibility” for her part in the collision. There is such a reluctance to be seen as a victim in this country that I believe there’s an unwarranted and unhelpful amount of “figure out your part in this” mentality regarding getting snowballed by thieves, liars, and betrayers.

Shania then goes on to describe her ex-husband—yes, the same one who has thrown her into this emotional hell—as “beautiful” and “wonderful” and “generous.”

Shania has received a lot of derision in the press for this out-of-the-blue defense of her ex. However, as someone who suffered my own epic-level personal betrayal a few years ago, and who wrote extensively about it in my book Can’t Think Straight: A Memoir of Mixed-Up Love, I think I know why Shania said this.

A part of you simply does not want to acknowledge—cannot acknowledge—that a person you trusted implicitly, loved, and spent so many years with—could be the same person who betrayed you so horribly. So your brain plays a little trick to help you get through the day: It tells you your ex is a good person, who just happened to do a bad thing. Your brain may even go so far as to begin to idealize the person who betrayed you—which conveniently allows you to place the blame for what happened squarely on yourself. Then along comes someone like Dr. Livingston who tells you that you must own up to your “responsibility” for your “mistake,” and the next thing you know, you are the one with the problem.

Note how she tells Ellen DeGeneres that she was in “denial” about the affair. What, Shania, you aren’t psychic?

We tend to lionize those who “move on” from trauma and who refuse to “play victim.” This might be part of the reason Shania remarried in rapid-fire fashion after her divorce. See? this tells the world. I didn’t let this affect me. I moved on!


Deep betrayal is seen as something that needs to be “got over” rather than what it is, something that alters you permanently and informs all of your subsequent daily choices and long-term decisions—something that you must learn how to live with, cope with, and manage like an alcoholic manages the desire to drink.

“Can’t I just move on?” Shania wails, wild-eyed and laughing edgily, as her sister and new husband press her to get counseling. “Can’t I just deal with this myself?”

I kept waiting for one of them to say, “But you haven’t been. Don’t you see what you’re doing isn’t working?” No one said this. However, since Shania has undertaken this docuseries, she must already know it.


I have a feeling somewhere in episode 3-6, Shania will finally let it out. Carrie is right, she needs to let out her emotions.


-Chris

__________________
Shania's Place
Shania: often imitated, never duplicated!!

"...Living, Loving, Laughing and Dreaming....."-Shania Twain