SHAME, THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
Shame. The elephant in the room that no one likes to talk about.
Shame. The intensely painful experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, connection and belonging, the fundamental aspects of our lives that bring meaning and purpose. Love, connection and a sense of belonging are matters of survival.
Shame. The fear we have done something wrong or failed to do something, that we haven’t lived up to a goal that makes us worthy of love, connection and belonging.
Shame says, I am bad, I am unloveable, I don’t belong.
The irony is that we all experience shame. You are not unique or alone in your shame. And yet, the power of shame keeps us hiding it, and keeps us in hiding.
Shame doesn’t sit in the far-off corners of our lives, it penetrates all the familiar areas including money, work, relationships, appearance and body image, addiction, food, sex, parenting, religion and more.
The pain of shame is SO real that it lights up the brain in the same way as physical pain. Evidence of just how much emotions can hurt.
SHAME & ADDICTION
We all sit somewhere on the scale of addiction but the question is, to what extent? Some of us are more entrenched than others, and those that are, are often more shame prone.
Shame and addiction are deeply enmeshed.
Shame can stem from all sorts of scenarios as children, from abuse to neglect to preoccupied parents to the simple mis-perception of a child that they are not loved. When a child feels disconnected from mama’s heart very early in life, or doesn’t receive the love, connection and intimacy that they need, they feel unworthy of love. They feel unworthy at their core, like they’re a bad person.
This feeling of unworthiness gets layered upon as we get older, causing us to seek endlessly outside of ourselves for what we feel is missing and to fill the unbearable hole of emptiness, aloneness, unloveableness, wrongness.
Food is an obvious place to turn to. Where shame is concerned food addiction is commonplace. Food represents love, connection, intimacy, mother and survival.
HEALING SHAME
Healing shame does not mean banishing it. It means meeting it. Over and over and over again.
Healing shame means coming to recognise your shame triggers, understanding their origin and being prepared to feel the wash of shame as it pours over you, in the moment.
Healing shame means bringing it into the light to be met with love.
The more you can be a container for shame and allow it to move through you like a wave, the more it will lose its power.
One of the reasons why we find it so hard to heal difficult emotions is because we’re not willing to meet them and to sit with the discomfort. But when we can, our entire relationship towards self begins to shift.
And only then can we begin to work with the more mechanical nature of addiction.
So long as we’re entrenched in the hidden pain of shame, the desire to self soothe will win us over, time and time again, bringing more shame. And thus, the wheel of addiction goes round and round.
PRACTICAL STEPS FOR HEALING SHAME
Begin to recognise your shame triggers. In which areas of your life do you feel shame? In which areas do you feel the need to hide?
Name your shame. Identify the areas and begin to name them as they arise. This brings them into conscious awareness.
Have the willingness to be vulnerable and to reach out to others. Through connection and the empathy of others, we learn to be with our shame. What is one is in the whole, this is TRUTH.
Recognise your worthiness, all the aspects of yourself that you like and all the good things that others like about you. Begin to place your attention here, consciously, and see how difficult or easy you find this.
If you struggle in your relationship with food, identify the foods you use to soothe, and look deeply into what it is you’re soothing? Can you begin to be with it? Over and over again.
When we can see that which hides within us (the blind spots) with conscious awareness, we bring it into the light for healing. This doesn’t mean it just goes away, it means that now we have a choice. In the seeing is the healing and the freedom to choose where to go next.
This is what it means to break free from the patterns of the past and reclaim the power that already lies within.
Wishing you much love, health & happiness,
Rebecca