Do you ever feel you need to hide certain parts of yourself to be accepted – that if people truly knew you, they would not like you? Do you have a strong inner critic trying to keep you in check?
“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” Brené Brown
Unlike some other emotions like anger, sadness and fear, shame can be a difficult emotion to identify, especially since it is so often connected to and/or masked by other emotions, and because many of us have developed strategies to keep the shame at bay. Carl Jung called shame “a soul eating emotion.” Dr. Brené Brown – one of the leading researchers on shame – defines it as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.” At its very root, shame is linked to us disowning certain parts of ourselves or our experience, and thus leads to an internal split. Having a strong inner critic is usually a good indicator of deep-seated shame.
While allowing for and feeling other emotions can often enable us to move through them, staying with our shame may lead us to a dissociative place that is hard for us to return from, as we spiral down into a loop of shame, guilt and blame. In the case of trauma, shame is one of the factors that can make it difficult to heal from the experience, and can keep us stuck in dissociative and/or reactive responses.
The following are a four tips for beginning to identify and move through shame.
#1. Become familiar with your shame patterns.
In my experience, one of the antidotes to shame is curiosity. Rather than feeling ashamed of our shame, getting curious can give us the distance we need to have compassion for ourselves and move through the emotion. As such, I invite you to start tracking the shame:
- What kinds of situations bring up a sense of shame? For example, does shame arise when you feel criticized, make a mistake, or are in the spotlight?
- What are the physiological indicators of shame in your body? For example, your cheeks flush, your heart races, your shoulders round inwards…
- What thoughts arise when you feel shame? What does your inner critic have to say about yourself and the world?
- What other emotions are present with the shame? Do you feel anger, fear, sadness, hurt, confusion? These emotions may be buried underneath the shame, or may arise to try to protect you from the shame.
- What is your response to feeling shame? Do you shut down and get depressed? Do you blame others and lash out? Do you escape by turning to distractive and/or addictive habits?
Keeping a shame journal for a week or more may be helpful for understanding your patterns. To avoid getting pulled into the shame, imagine that you are a social scientist studying your experience. If any judgment comes up about yourself, send yourself and the judgment compassion.
#2. Follow the shame to its root.
Once you start understanding you own shame patterns, you can go a little deeper.
- If there was an age associated with when you first started feeling shame, what age would that be (if possible, let a number pop into your head)? What was happening at the time? Was there a difficult situation at home, at school, or in the external environment you were growing up in?
- What beliefs did you start developing about yourself and the world based on what you were experiencing? For example, “I’m not enough,” “I can only rely on myself,” “I have to be perfect to get love…”
- Do you associate your shame with anyone in your family? For example, was one of your parents/guardians hyper critical and/or rageful? Or depressed and unsure of themselves? Shame is often an inherited emotion which our younger selves absorb without even realizing.
- What is the shame trying to protect you from? Although this may be counter-intuitive, because shame is so unpleasant, the emotion is there for a reason and is trying to achieve something for us. Usually, it wants to avoid feeling vulnerable, judged, not enough, and so on.
#3. Notice the internal split.
Where there is shame, there is an internal split. Always. Now that you have a sense of how you started developing the sense of shame, you can begin to feel into the split that arises in you when you feel shame. Usually, you can identify the split because there are two (or more) parts of you that are arguing with each other or having opposite responses. A common split is between the part of us that wants safety (and/or connection), and the part of us that wants autonomy and freedom. The first part might be compliant and conflict avoidant, while the second part might want to fight and push back.
When you feel yourself splitting off, take a moment and acknowledge the different parts. See if you can identify what each is trying to achieve for you. Send gratitude to both, and then ask them if they can start supporting each other instead of working against each other.
#4. Send compassion to your shame.
Most of us have learned that the only way to deal with shame and the parts of us we are ashamed of is by disconnecting from, indulging in, or punishing them. However, in my experience, the only way to heal shame is to send the parts you are ashamed of and disconnected from love and compassion.
Feel into your younger self, when you first started feeling shame. There may be several ages that come up – in that case, pick the one that feels more charged, or the youngest. And give them love. Let them know that whatever is happening, it’s not their fault. Let them know that they are lovable and OK, exactly as they are. Thank them for the courage they had to take on the shame as their own, and let them know it’s safe to let go now. It’s no longer theirs to carry. And invite the different parts that you have disconnected from to start coming back. Until you feel more whole and centered in yourself, and able to hold your ground even in the face of doubt, or negativity directed at you.
© Jenny Brav
