We all feel shame sometimes. Some of us feel it more deeply than others.
Maybe your boyfriend breaks up with you and you can’t deal with your overwhelming sense of rejection, so you immediately create an online dating profile. Shame.
Maybe you become aware of a hot feeling in your face in an embarrassing situation, but you are quick to push it out of your awareness. You force yourself to smile and laugh because you can’t stand the discomfort. Shame.
Perhaps you harbor so many thoughts of worthlessness that you don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning. Shame.
As I said in my last post, shame is multidimensional - it is an emotion, a physical sensation, and a system of beliefs. We all carry shame, but few of us know how to recognize it and what to do with it when we do feel it. And when we do experience it, it can feel so unbearable that the temptation is to try to get rid of it by whatever means possible.
The problem is that shame does not go away if you try to suppress it. Instead, it stays buried deep within your mind, your body, and your heart, and it may even intensify. Research has actually found that the more you try to resist negative thoughts, for instance, the more prevalent they will become. At the same time, if we aren’t conscious of our shame, it may begin to shape our motivations for acting in our relationships and in the world around us.
Instead of shutting shame out of our awareness, we need to welcome it into our conscious experience. We need to view shame as information that something within us has been wounded and needs our attention and care. We need to adopt a posture of curiosity towards our shame as we explore the question: where does my shame come from?
Most of our shame usually comes from experiences we had or messages we received in childhood. Children do not experience the world in the same way as adults; they are incredibly sensitive and can experience a vast array of situations as traumatic. And at the root of all trauma is shame.
Whether our parents intended to shame us or not, our child selves can internalize shame messages, which turn into beliefs, bodily sensations, and feelings. However children do not have the psychological capacity to feel shame, or they would be completely overwhelmed. So, our bodies attempt to protect us by storing shame deep within us until we are adults and have the psychological resources to start to processing it. That is when shame begins to emerge.
Shame can also result from other types of trauma you may experience as an adult, such as sexual, physical, or relational trauma. In any case, shame from these events needs to be processed in order for you to heal and move beyond what you experienced.
In my therapy office, I help women get in touch with their shame so that it can find release. With shame and any other emotion, the reality is that the only way around it is through it. I help women gain the courage to identify and wade through their shame - the feelings, sensations, and beliefs - so that they can move beyond it.
I’m convinced that this is perhaps the most important and powerful process that anyone can go through! When you are aware of your shame, it becomes less scary and threatening. When you become comfortable with it, you can hold a magnifying glass up to it and explore where it came from. As a result, you gain more self-understanding and no longer act from it subconsciously.
I love seeing women become more grounded, more free, and more whole as they begin to heal from shame. No matter how old you are, it is never too late to enter into this rich and life-changing journey!