Shame is often born out of childhood wounds leading you to create untrue stories (core beliefs) about yourself, others and the world around you. The marks are so deep you may be completely unaware of them. If you know or suspect shame has weighed your life down, has wreaked havoc on your sense of self or relationships, there are ways to disempower your shame.
- Get resourced. Before you do any work around this, it’s important to have tools to get grounded if you need them. For some, shame is lurking around trauma which impacts your nervous system, making calmness challenging to find. Make a self-care and relational support list. Create a safe space or sanctuary (real or visualized) to retreat to for balance if needed.
- Identify how shame shows up for you. An emotion typically involving the way you see yourself at the core, there are many ways shame can be triggered. Signs of shame can be perfectionism, blaming or criticizing others. Where perfectionism tends to harm the individual, this display of shame can be harmful to others. Human beings have an extraordinary ability to deflect against shame, the most toxic and paralyzing emotion. Avoidance and denial are other ways.
- Get familiar with your wounds. Part of the process of developing a different relationship with your shame involves bringing all relevant matters to the forefront, including painful past experiences possibly involving trauma, less than ideal parent-child relationships and other painful experiences where you might have developed a narrative that does not serve you.
- Notice your triggers. When there are unresolved wounds, there are triggers; situations that initiate a cascade of feelings that indicate something negative about you. Keep a small notebook with you and jot down times when you suspect shame has shown up. What happened, how did you feel and what did you do as a result? Look for patterns emerging.
- Take the mask off your shame. Shame can be hard to pinpoint, almost silent at times, because of the defenses erected around it like self-blame, other-blame, withdrawal or denial. Considering your life experiences. Are there possible detrimental core belief systems that arose out of them? The secrets of shame lose their power when they are are out in the open.
- Develop a new relationship with it. Once you are aware of it's presence you can then begin to notice when it comes up. Connect with this part of you. What does it need? Can you befriend shame rather than hide from it? This work is less about shame eradication and more developing a new meaning around it.
- Seek healing through self and others. The long term work of shame disempowerment requires attention to your inner states. Check in daily with yourself around how you're feeling in the moment, what's going on in your body and any other mindfulness related practices you can find that resonate. Invite positive emotions such as gratitude. Developing self-compassion is also very important in that it allows you to start to take care of that wounded part of you. You've uncovered it, now it needs to be nurtured.