Letting Go of Shame

Shame: Shame can be defined as a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation that arises from the perception of having done something dishonorable, immoral, or improper.

Shame is connected to processes that occur within the limbic system, the emotion center of the brain. When something shameful happens, your brain reacts to this stimulus by sending signals to the rest of your body that lead you to feel frozen in place.

Okay so we defined it,

But what does it mean to start to take shame away from you and get it out of your body.

I think we have to start by talking about where it began, and how shame was the way that we were taught about morals and how to exist in the world. We grew up in households that never let us figure out what really felt good in our bodies. But instead grew up in households that told us what to do, feel, say.

The shame starts to bubble when you figure out independent thought actually exists at a young age, you are taught to ignore it because “guardian knows best”

But did they?

I feel as though a lot of our guardians had a way of operating out of fear and projecting that fear deeply on us without truly knowing it.

I believe a lot of our anxiety didn’t start out as our own. But now it lives with us and we have to figure out where the noise everyone else was telling you ends and where you begin.

Sitting with yourself is probably one of the most important things you will ever do when it comes to healing.

I want to say its almost like building a furniture piece. The first step is taking it all out of the box and taking inventory.

Can you say you have taken a full inventory of yourself? Do you know how to look at the darkest parts of your history and hug them?

Shame is what hides it all. Puts all those dark parts behind a curtain, building dust, causing rot, and really degrading you slowly until one day you reach this point where you feel like you are just no longer in control.

But what’s the next step?

Well it all depends on what you feel you are capable of.

Some people are only and will only ever be able to deal with these things by doing harmful things to themselves and others around them and let the shame absolutely consume them.

While others decide to look those things in the face and find the beautiful parts of yourself that lived within it.

Shame feeds on the things behind that curtain, getting greedy, wanting more space, creating more things to be ashamed of.

Shame is so good at making us feel like we are just not capable, and it when it tag teams in with anxiety it makes every step feel like an overwhelming disaster not even worth digging into.

You are absolutely worth getting to know. That is why the people in your life love you. They want to stick around and build friendships with you because you shine so bright, but if you never look at those dark things and understand yourself fully. They will never love you as deep as you want. You can’t want and hope for deep connection without pulling back that curtain and looking at it all… and start to unpack.

Unpacking is that turning point. Start to dig where it feels easiest. Going too far too soon can send everything tumbling out, and thats not the way we want to unpack it all, that can cause a lot of chaos. Just like with a real closet or storage unit. Reaching for the back will just cause a huge mess and be extremely overwhelming to clean up.

But as you start to unpack from whats infront of you, you will see that there is sometimes a path that can clear out some boxes by lumping it all together.

It takes time though. I can’t say how much. Every person is different every person has a different sense of how much they can unpack and use what they have just unpacked to heal.

What does it mean to heal?

It means creating a connection between the brain and the body creating a sense of connection that usually isn’t felt any time before.

That comes with understanding your body. Understanding what emotion feels like in your body.

I do want to make a disclosure that people who have traumatic backgrounds should start to do heavy and deep unpacking with a professional. Picking through those long strings can cause a reaction or revaluation that you were not expecting.