A Sneaky Obstacle that Undermines Our Well-Being

One of the most hidden barriers to satisfying relationships.

“We often hear how fear can hold us back from taking the risks necessary to love and be loved. But there's another human emotion that may be even more destructive to our relationships: shame.

Shame is a complex and typically hidden emotion. We all experience it. But oftentimes we’re not aware of the secret ways it operates—and how it harms ourselves and constrains our relationships. We may become so fused with shame that it unconsciously drives behaviors that are toxic for love and intimacy.

Shame is the belief that we are flawed, inadequate, or defective. But shame is more than just a toxic belief. It is something we feel in our body. When someone says to us, “You’re selfish, you’re too sensitive, you're a failure,” our shame may be triggered. We might notice a felt sense of tightness, jumpiness, or a sinking feeling in our stomach. Shaming words diminish our value and worth, especially if we don’t have a strong sense of ourselves.

Shame poses such a danger to our well-being and integrity that we might immediately run from it. We shut down the conversation to avoid feeling shame or embarrassment. Or we attack the person we feel shamed by, even if it's someone we love. We transfer the harness of shame to them so we don’t have to feel it. In his classic book, Shame: The Power of Caring, Gershen Kaufman explores how we transfer shame to others when we're unwilling or unable to deal with it inside ourselves.

Being Ashamed of Our Shame

A healthy relationship with ourselves and others requires healing the shame that secretly drives us. Fearful of being debilitated by shame, we dissociate from it—cutting off our awareness from this painful and overwhelming emotion. The first step toward healing shame is to allow ourselves to notice it. We need to find some space from it and shine a healing light of awareness on it.

A major obstacle to healing shame is being ashamed of our shame. It’s one thing to have shame in us (as everyone does!) and quite another to think something is wrong with us for having shame. Shame is simply part of the human condition; it takes ongoing mindfulness and courage to recognize and work with it. As we find a way to allow shame into our awareness without being ashamed of our shame, we take an important step toward accepting ourselves as we are. We begin to gain a healthy distance from our shame—seeing it for what it is—a universal emotion largely conditioned from all the shaming we endured growing up. As we become less defined by shame, we can see it for what it is—and isn’t. Feeling shame doesn’t mean something is wrong with us or that we’re flawed. It simply means that a normal human emotion just got triggered in us, perhaps based on old, painful feelings of shame that need healing. As we cultivate a gentle spaciousness around the feeling shame, it tends to pass. We come back to our center—affirming ourselves just as we are.

Kindness toward yourself—full and radical self-acceptance, as psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach puts it—is an antidote to shame. Remember that you are not your shame. You are—and always will be—much larger than that."

Read the full article here!

Reflection: Do you believe that kindness towards yourself is an antidote to shame? And what do you personally do to deal with feelings of shame?

#Shame #Ashamed #Hidden emotion #Barrier