Understanding Shame: Why It Shows Up and How to Begin Unlearning It
Imagine this: it's Friday night, and you've finally finished all the tasks you needed to complete before checking out for the weekend. You're spending your night doing whatever floats your boat, feeling chill and catching your breath for a second. Then something happens — a trigger does what triggers do best and catches you off guard, interrupting your calm evening. It might be something "small" that no one else noticed, but you did. Whatever happened, it reminded you of a trauma you experienced before. Your nervous system suddenly feels on high alert, and you're overcome with a heaviness in your chest, a nauseating ache in your stomach, and an urge to curl within yourself and hide from the rest of the world. You may logically know that the trauma that happened to you wasn't your fault and was outside of your control, and yet this creeping, ever-present feeling of shame shows up randomly, at the slightest sign of a trigger. Today, we're talking about shame.
How We Try to Escape Shame
Shame is such a slick bastard. It has a voice of its own that blends pretty well with ours at times, so we make many different attempts to shut it down. We may try to straight-up avoid the shame — drinking it away, sexing it away, shopping it away. We may try to punish ourselves as a result of the shame: subscribing to negative thoughts about ourselves, participating in self-sabotaging behaviors, or hiding parts of ourselves out of fear of the shame being reinforced by others.
Where Shame Comes From
The ways in which we've tried to get rid of shame are based on us just trying our best to survive at that time. Some of our attempts might've helped us for a moment or two, and others, we may find, aren't helping at all anymore. I think one thing that's important to know, and that I hope will be helpful to read, is that shame is definitely hard as hell to get rid of, because from a very early age we may have been taught to feel ashamed about parts of ourselves — from our environments, from what we hear in mainstream media, and from what we see online. So when that trauma happened, there was likely a shame belief that was activated, or maybe even reinforced: "I am unlovable," "I am broken," "If others truly knew me, they would reject me," "I am unworthy."
How to Begin Unlearning Shame
While we can recognize how difficult it is to unlearn shame, there is still hope. Unlearning shame starts with reconnecting with the body — identifying what it feels like when shame shows up, because our bodies are our sacred messengers who know our needs. It can also be helpful to become aware of the thoughts associated with shame. If you're going toward something that's important to you — something you want, like connection, pleasure, or creativity — what limiting thoughts come up just before you take that next step? Shame likes to make us feel inadequate and unworthy, but the things shame tries to convince us of are not true.
Unlearning shame isn't something you have to figure out alone, and it isn't something that happens overnight. If this resonates with you and you're ready to explore where your shame comes from and how to loosen its grip, I’m here to help — reach out to schedule a session and take that first step toward reconnecting with yourself.