Shame is a funny thing. Well not funny haha because it’s a shame that can drive us to a place of real isolation and pain. But funny because no one can see it. Me included. I think if 10 years ago you’d told me I had a problem with shame I’d probably have dismissed it completely. We tend to only associate shame with something awful happening to us, doing something awful to others or falling off the edge of society in some way.
The reality of shame is that you probably feel it every day. The cultures we live in are drenched in it. It’s been a tool in the religions many of our societies are built around since the very start and the media continues to use it today. As do parents, teachers, partners and the media. It’s a massively powerful way to control you.
Disconnecting from shame = freedom
Which means that when you start to disconnect from shame you feel so much more free. And you’ll suddenly start to notice that it was like a root system through the soil of your life, affecting everything from how you feel about your body to how you show up in relationships, whether you people please, are a perfectionist, how much you numb yourself wine, food, Netflix marathons etc and how you speak to yourself and others.
If you ever feel alone, isolated, broken, lost, like an outsider, like you have to hide part of yourself or pretend about something then I guarantee shame is involved.
Here’s a little story about how it showed up for me in January this year.
I was out with a friend having a coffee. I’d had all these grand plans for finding a new kind of physical freedom this year. And then spent most of January in bed, either with flu or having an extra period (thanks perimenopause).
So, I tried and failed. And my body felt a bit alien to me – a bit out of control. I felt vulnerable. Ashamed.
And she said,
“Stop calling yourself fat.”
It was kind of a shock. I’m not sure I’d even noticed don’t it.
I KNOW how much the things we say about ourselves affect self-esteem and confidence. And yet here I was shaming myself.
It was shame that made me call myself fat like that. In case my friend was looking at me and thinking “wow she’s piled on the pounds” (which she’d never think because she’s not a mean b*tch like my critic). I wanted to get in there and hurt myself before she could. It was an almost unbearable feeling of being deficient somehow and my habit in the past was to deal with that feeling by shaming myself. Calling myself names.
Shame will do that. Make us try and control what others are thinking about us instead of just loving ourselves through painful moments. Project our worst fears of judgment onto people who’d never be so cruel.
When my friend told me to stop saying that about myself it was like a kindly slap in the face. I suddenly saw that I’d slipped back into that place of thinking self-criticism and being hard on myself were going to turn things around.
Despite having years of proof that it doesn’t work like that. It’s not motivating.
I almost shamed myself again (“she must think I’m a terrible coach to beat myself up like that” etc).
But I just about caught it.
If I hadn’t then I probably would have started badmouthing myself as a coach too. Then gone home and started some weird quick weight loss diet or crazy exercise plan. Both of which would have taken time and effort just to try and get rid of that narrative “I’m not good enough as I am” that Shane loves so much.
But Instead I plugged into the new inner narrative I have worked so hard to develop over the past decade.
And she said “It’s okay that you weren’t perfect, that old insecurities came back. But now be patient with yourself, build back slowly, love yourself as you are right now because you deserve that, you are already worthy of it and you’ll hit your goals if you go at them with love not fear.”
Something like that.
And that shift to self-compassion meant that I stopped feeling ashamed. The shame had no power when I faced it. Stopped calling myself names. No longer felt afraid of not being perfect. Which meant I could just let myself be. Release the tension. Relax. Get well.
I stopped worrying how others might see me. And because I wasn’t hating on myself I had the headspace to think about how to help myself. I experimented with increasing the protein in my diet and found I had more energy. It actually led me to a bit of a breakthrough I might not otherwise have reached.
The only thing that made this possible was choosing self-compassion. Self-criticism is just inefficient. Shame is always destructive. Hurting yourself isn’t going to make you better. Whoever taught you that was probably pretty unhappy themselves.
Shame and the inner critic
You know I see you with your brutal inner critic that never allows you to really relax and be yourself in case other people will judge you, reject you, find something unlikeable in you. It’s probably telling you right now that self compassion is never going to make an impact on things like losing weight, earning more, finding a partner, making money – all the things society tells us to define our worth by. But the reality is that self compassion makes those things easy because it dilutes the shame. It removes its sticky fingers. Allows you to connect to you rather than focusing on what other people think, which is what shame tells us matters the most. And that’s something that’s so important to focus on with shame – unlike all our other emotions it’s not self generated. It has been imposed on us by someone externally – probably to control us in some way – and then we’ve repeated it to ourselves. It has no use to you, only to someone who wants to control you or hurt you. It’s something you can safely jettison. While other emotions might be useful signposts, shame is just scuppering your boat.
And I’d like to show you that there is another way. No, your critic will never completely go (even if you become a coach lol). But it can end up as the quietest voice in your head instead of the loudest. One that only occasionally shouts.
And my god that’s a life changing shift. If you’re ready to make it get in touch.
