Shame and Freedom

What is your experience of shame?
Can you feel it in your body, or how do you know that you feel shame?
So often I find that my clients don’t even know what shame feels like. They know what shame is only by the response that they have to it.

What does it feel like for you?
Perhaps it’s a heaviness in your chest. A tightness in your throat. Maybe a constricting feel around your rib cage.
Find where it is in your body, and just let that feeling be there.
Go throughout your day today, allowing this emotion to be there and to come with you. Let it be there as you do the dishes, as you take care of the kids, as you talk to your husband.

Your instinct may be to tense up against it, to try to push it away. Notice when you are doing this, and just come back to your breath. Put on a hand on the center of your chest, and remind yourself that you are okay. That this is simply what shame feels like, and it’s not something that you need to run away from.

This feeling is welcome here.

You may notice yourself getting mad, impatient, frustrated – with yourself, your kids, this emotion, your husband. Recognize this too, and remind yourself that it’s also okay. Again, take a deep breath right down to your belly, and relax into that feeling.

This is just a sensation that you are feeling.
It’s not something to be afraid of.

The reason that we don’t want to open up to this emotion and feel it, is because of what we make it mean about us, about our worth.
We make it mean that we really are worthless, disgusting, or a piece of crap.

When our brain registers this emotion, it takes it as a sign that we have something to be ashamed of. Something to hide from other people.
We don’t want other people to know the truth about us. We don’t want them to think the same thoughts about us that we have about ourselves.

But how can you heal, if you don’t open yourself up?
How can you work through your depression, your darkness, if you don’t understand what is going on?

Shame keeps you from healing. It keeps you trapped in your story that there is something wrong with you.
Not because there is actually something wrong with you or actually something to hide, but simply because you don’t know how to process the emotion of shame yet.

That’s all.

It can feel scary to open up to this emotion, especially when you are so used to pushing it away. It can feel like you are the only one, that it is necessary to not open up about your specific experience.

It’s not.

Learning how to process shame is a skill that every single human has the ability to learn.
And on the other side of that shame is a freedom that you haven’t tasted before.
Come with me.
I’ve got you.

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