What Is It About?
Napkin Version
We all make mistakes as we make our way through life, especially when we are in new situations or learning new skills. This is a normal part of being human, and is usually what drives our growth.
However if we interpret our failure or poor behaviour to mean we are a bad person, or flawed in some way, we can experience Shame. This commonly happens during even the most normal of childhoods.
So how we interpret challenging situations can make the difference between healthy growth and resilience, or suffering in shame.
Shame can also develop if we stay too long in a situation where we don’t fit, are constantly judged, or repeatedly criticised, ignored, neglected, rejected, or de-valued by others.
While Shame can help us to adjust our behaviour to be more considerate and respectful of others, repeated Shame can develop an ‘inner critic’ that puts us down, undermines a positive outlook, and has us believing we don’t deserve a good outcome. This critic can slowly eat away at our self-worth, and impact our quality of life.
Handling Shame
In The Moment
Training our brain to use a relevant process helps us to focus more effectively and move on more easily. Using it often will also help our brain to catch Shame sooner, making it easier to manage.
Reflecting upon our behaviour, and deciding if there is anything to be learnt, makes it easier to acknowledge that mistakes are part of the process of growth - which is part of being a healthy human. Learning and adjusting as we go, makes for good character, and a positive self-esteem.
Consciously choosing to respect ourselves while also respecting others, ensures we look after ourselves and don’t open ourselves up to any difficulty that comes from mistreating others. Doing so helps to avoid any guilt and shame that can follow our mistreatment of others, as well as any emotional reaction we may make if we are treated poorly.
Once we know and acknowledge our worth, we can better choose situations that we thrive in, and can add value to - both of which support a positive self-esteem.
Self-Reflection
If the emotion feels quite troubling, it’s usually worth checking if something else is going on first.
By resolving things in ourselves and clearing any other residual emotions, we can reduce the intensity of the emotion - now and when we encounter it again in future.
Doing so also makes us less likely to ‘attract’ other difficulties that leave us feeling the same way.
See the Processing and Clearing an Emotion page for a generic process to resolve and clear an emotion.
Working Through Shame
The actions we choose to take in response to an emotion can make a significant difference to how well we adjust and move on from it.
The more we take genuine actions that are uplifting and ‘right’ i.e., are good for ourselves and everyone else (including the environment and other living beings) - for now, and over the long-term, the better our experience of life becomes.
The following can help us to work through Shame:
Appreciating where Shame comes from, how common it is, and how most of us feel flawed as a result of normal experiences.
Appreciating that anything we have done so far, was in attempt to adapt the best we could, using all that we knew.
Looking out for the inner critic, and converting it from a misery guts to a helpful coach who is on our side, by asking it to turn its critical eye to spotting positive constructive ways to improve things.
Putting ourselves first, and taking good care of ourselves, whilst still respecting others.
Increasing our communication skills, so we are more comfortable with saying no, expressing what we need, and calmly dealing with difficult situations.
Removing ourselves from toxic situations, and getting help to do so safely, if we need it (see the next section).
Being around people who genuinely support, value, and encourage us to be the best version of ourselves.
Acting with integrity, and in keeping with our true character.
Choosing reliable life principles to reduce difficulties in our life, and making amends if we fail someone.
Seeing ourselves as valuable, and worthy of a better experience of life, and doing what we can to give ourselves that.
Putting our hearty effort into producing something of good quality that adds value in our own unique way or style.
Using our intuition to keep ourselves on our own path, and being comfortable when it doesn’t fit the normal route.
Thinking ahead and giving ourselves every chance to succeed, when working towards something that is important to us.
If we are in a situation where we are being mistreated by others, the severity of it can make a difference to the approach we take.
If It’s A One-Off Thing:
If the poor treatment is a one-off thing, or doesn’t happen often, the following may help:
Seeing poor treatment in context - often we can be mistreated by others when they are dealing with other things, or have unchecked emotional triggers that cause strong reactions.
While we all deserve to be treated well, most people aren’t able to do this all of the time. So it’s usually best not to take poor behaviour towards us personally.
Considering the motivation behind it - those who criticise may be trying to protect us from being hurt in the future, or may be trying to protect themselves e.g. from feeling inferior, or having to question their own beliefs.
Consciously deciding if there is anything constructive we want to take from it, usually makes it easier to let the rest go.
for on-going mistreatment:
Even though we may be aware of it, poor treatment can still quietly wear us down over time.
Enduring a toxic situation can result in us having a ‘short fuse’, increased anxiety, withdrawing socially, a strong inner critic, and a variety of other things, all of which can have flow on effects in our life.
So addressing it sooner rather than later is important. The following may help with this:
Getting advice if it will help us to handle the situation better.
If efforts to resolve it would repeatedly fail, or put us at further risk, removing ourselves from the situation altogether.
If we need it, getting help to remove ourselves safely – physically and emotionally.
Appreciating things can get more difficult directly after leaving a situation, and organising help and support ahead of time.
Clearing Residual Shame
Emotional energy can stick with us, even after we have worked through and resolved whatever caused it.
There are a number of ways we can clear the energy, including doing something physical in nature, imagining the emotion leaving our body, or for more intense emotions, there is a variety of different therapies and alternative forms of energy healing that can also help.
This short video has been created to help the imagination process:
Imagine holding a ball of energy in your hands, and ‘charging’ it with the feeling of love, and anything else that would help to offset it (especially any feelings that were missing in the situation)
Imagine any residual Shame energy flowing out of your body, into the ball, and being transformed into the positive equivalent.
Once all the residual energy has left, imagine the ball shooting far out into the atmosphere and dissolving into pure white light energy.
