How to Overcome Shame
Hello there.
Few things on earth feel worse than shame.
For those of you who don't understand what shame is:
It's that painful feeling state
that results from comparing yourself
to your standards and falling short.
This leads to self-worth problems.
But the question still remains:
Where did these standards come from?
When you were young you came into a society.
Socialization is a must in an unawakened society.
In an unawakened society there are collective social and cultural values.
When we value one thing we often condemn the opposite.
For example, self-sacrifice may be a social value
and selfishness is condemned.
We deem one good and the other bad.
In order to keep the social order we socialize children,
which basically means we train them to behave in a way
that is acceptable to the society we live in.
We indoctrinate children with our social and cultural values
and reward them when they adhere to those values.
We punish children when they demonstrate behavior
that contradicts our social and cultural values.
If we want our needs to be met,
survive in a society and have a chance at feeling things like
love, belonging, contribution and safety we have one option:
To adopt those values of the society we are born into
and hold ourselves to them.
Let's say when you were younger you ran into the room naked
but you were raised in a society that valued modesty
and that condemned public nudity.
When you ran out into the room,
your parents would instantly disapprove of that particular behavior.
They might punish you, they would definitely scold you,
they would send you back to your room.
That disapproval would be painful enough that you would decide
"I can't ever have this happen again!"
So you would adopt the value of modesty
so as to never feel that type of disapproval
and embarrassment again.
To avoid hurt in the future, what we do is we adopt
the cultural values of the society that we are born into.
By doing this we become our own corrections officer.
We get to police ourselves, which is a lot less painful
than being policed by other people.
We become absolutely obsessed with being good.
After all, being good means
getting your needs met, being loved, belonging, survival.
And being bad means getting ostracized,
feeling pain, not having your needs met and being unloved.
>From this point on shame takes over.
It takes over to save you from negative future consequences.
It exists to keep you in check.
It is a function of the conscience.
Anytime you violate your own adopted rules, you slip into shame.
The people who struggle with shame the most and chronically
were raised in societies where their caregivers
did not differentiate between doing bad and being bad.
For example, a little kid takes a cookie off of the counter
that they aren't supposed to take.
And the parent responds by saying something like
"Bad girl!" or
"Why the hell did you do that, that was so stupid!".
That child is actually incapable of differentiating
between the negative action and themselves being negative.
Shame is all about being bad in contrast to guilt,
which is about doing something that's bad.
Now this is painful enough when that shame is coming up
as a result of individual experiences that are occasional;
it's an entirely other monster, when it's a chronic thing
as a result of thinking that something about you
that you can't change is chronically bad.
If the truth of yourself violates
social values that you yourself have adopted,
you will forever feel that conflict or contradiction within yourself.
You will have determined that because there is an aspect of your truth
that conflicts with the social values you've adopted,
that must mean something's wrong with you.
And if something's wrong with you,
that must mean something's bad about you.
Early on in life people develop an internalized view of themselves
as either adequate or inadequate within the world.
If we find that something about us
conflicts with the values of our social group
especially if we experience negative consequences for those things,
we get the message that we do not fit in the world,
we are inadequate, inferior, unworthy and not good enough.
Shame is in fact the root of low self esteem.
For example,
let's say that you were born into the typical Christian bible-loving family
but you are gay.
And let's say that because of the society that you were raised in
you adopted that belief that being gay is an abomination.
Your standard will be "I must be straight.".
But internally you know you are not straight
and so you are going to permanently fall short of your own standard.
You will feel shame all the time as a permanent state of being
as long as this is in fact your standard.
And keep in mind that you can have conscious standards
but also subconscious standards.
If you feel shame but you don't know why,
it's because you have a subconscious standard that you are unaware of.
It must be known that shame manifests
as some vicious, vicious physical ailments.
One of the most glaring examples of these physical ailments is Aids.
The most prevalent cause of Aids is in fact shame,
especially shame relative to one's own sexuality.
Some other ailments that can be caused by shame are:
Chronic fatigue syndrome, acne, addictions,
eating disorders, impotence, kidney problems, cancer,
yeast infections, stuttering and other speech problems
shinbone injuries, chronic pain, depression, anxiety,
all immune system disorders,
especially disorders where the body begins to attack itself.
When people feel shame they often defend themselves
against that shame in certain ways.
When you're around somebody who feels shame,
it can feel almost like you're walking on broken glass or on thin ice.
They are in a permanent state of defense.
They blame others often aggressively.
Blame diverts attention from one's own insecurities
and perceived flaws.
It makes someone wrong so we can feel right.
And when people struggle with shame,
they become consumed by contempt for other people.
Other-contempt sometimes prevents us from feeling self-contempt.
Contempt protects us from feeling shame
because it gives us a way to deny the fact that in truth
at our core we feel beneath consideration,
deserving of scorn,
worthless and as if something is bad or wrong about us.
People who feel shame become excessively narcissistic.
Never confuse self-love with narcissism.
It could not be farther from the truth.
But people who feel shame become
preoccupied with their own self-interests.
They go on a quest externally to find
approval, superiority, admiration and significance.
The quest for attention is an attempt to fill the void of feeling worthless.
To understand more about narcissism
you can watch my video on youtube titled "Narcissism".
So what do we do, if we feel ashamed
and we want to stop feeling that shame?
The first thing we have to do is to become
completely aware of the standards which we are holding ourselves to.
This requires us to be brave enough to be completely honest.
It's not very much fun for us to admit to the standards
that we actually hold ourselves to.
Some of those might actually be embarrassing.
Just becoming aware of what our standards
and social values actually are is enough to
decrease the power that those particular standards hold over us.
Then we make the decision:
Do I want to keep this standard or do I not?
If you do want to keep the standard, that's all well and good
and it also decreases the amount of shame that you hold.
Why? - Because it means you're now consciously choosing
to allow that feeling of shame to stay.
That gives you a sense of power over your shame
instead of feeling powerless to it.
Step two - If we want to change our standards,
we have to change our beliefs.
Standards come in the form of beliefs.
For example, one of our standards could be
"I should be straight instead of gay."
Another belief is "If I'm gay, I'm an abomination."
Once we find the beliefs that we have about the standards
we're holding ourselves to we have the opportunity to change them.
To find out how to change a belief your can watch my video
on youtube titled "How to Change a Belief".
Also apply these beliefs
to the Byron Katie process called "The Work".
Three - We need to have a serious think about right vs. wrong.
If we feel shame
we have already wandered deep into the land of stigma.
We have to question our social values.
We have to question what it is
that we are holding ourselves accountable to.
Now, it seems straight forward:
Question the rightness or wrongness of your cultural and social beliefs.
But unbelievably enough people don't usually do this.
If you're born into a catholic society you don't question those beliefs;
you automatically adopt them.
Most of us never actually make a conscious choice
to be a certain religion
or to follow a certain practice or a certain set of beliefs.
We call ourselves catholic because our parents were catholic.
And their parents' parents were catholic and so on and so forth.
No matter what we are a part of, we need to be questioning our beliefs.
Because this particular way of contracting a belief
is more like contracting an illness. It's so unconscious, it's like
it just rubbed off on you and now it's part of you.
It's not really yours and I would be as aggressive as to say
that it doesn't actually belong to you
and you don't actually have the right to say
you believe it until you have questioned it completely.
You need to question the rightness and wrongness of everything.
Even the things that seem obviously right or wrong
in order to reach full awareness
and also in order to stop feeling like you are bad.
You should also question whether it is possible
for there to be right or wrong in this universe.
Step four - We need to integrate our feelings
of shame which result in fact from our childhood.
If we feel shame in our adult lives
it is because we have been shamed in our childhoods.
We have experienced that emotional wounding.
And what we are experiencing in our adult life
is in fact a reflection of that original wound.
So what we need to do when we're feeling shame,
instead of try to escape from it, is we need to sink into the shame
and be completely unconditionally present with it. We need to find
the child who was wounded who was shamed to begin with
and we need to re-parent that particular child.
To understand how this process works
you can watch my video on youtube titled
"How to heal the emotionaly body".
Step five - We need to be disciplined about our self-approval process.
This means that every day we need to pick one thing at least
that we don't approve of about ourselves
and we need to find approval for it.
We're looking to feel better about what we reject about ourselves.
For example, if we think we are dark,
we need to find approval for being dark.
If we think we have cellulite, we need to get way outside the box
and find approval for cellulite.
We can also invite other people to contribute by having them brainstorm
ideas with us about how we can approve of what we disapprove of.
Ask yourself: "How is this thing I disapprove of...Good?".
We can also do this relative to other people.
If we hold ourselves to standards, chances are really high
that we hold everyone else to a high standard as well.
We have a high level of condemnation for them or things about them.
So we can flip this process and do the same thing.
Only this time our question to ourselves is
"How is this thing I disapprove of in this other person good?".
Step six - We need to recognize our insatiable desire to be good.
And also we need to question
why it is that we need so badly to be good.
Then we need to look for proof that we are good.
Positive self-focus is of paramount importance.
Again we can involve other people in this process
by asking them to tell us what they like about us.
Ask yourself:
"How would someone benefit by having a relationship with me?"
"How am I a good person?"
I'll start by telling you that people who experience shame
have a very strong conscience.
And over the course of history
this has been seen as a trait that only good people have.
Because people who have a high level of conscience
also adhere to strong morals.
Meaning that this is a person - you are a person -
who is not going to deliberately harm other people.
There is an innate yearning in people to connect,
to be seen, to be heard,
to be felt, to be understood, to belong.
If you feel shame,
these things in life are not something you have tasted yet.
You have been met with the opposite.
As a result you withdrew and closed yourself off
and shut down to the world.
Now there is a split within your heart
between the insatiable yearning for those things
and the fear and pain of opening up and being hurt again.
You need to address this split within yourself
with empathy and compassion.
Many people within society carry this same split
and you have the opportunity to heal it in yourself
by practicing the art of seeing, feeling,
hearing, understanding and seeing the value in yourself.
And you also have the power to heal it in other people
by practicing the art of seeing, feeling, hearing,
understanding and seeing the value in them.
You did not end up this way
because something is wrong or bad about you.
You ended up this way because during the process of socialization,
which hurts so much more of us than you know, you were hurt.
The more you see that you were hurt because
of ignorance and also because the very same wounds
that were given to you were given to the very people
who perpetuated those wounds to you,
the less personal this wounding will seem.
It really isn't about you.
If you can begin to see yourself through the lens
of empathy and compassion, you just might be able to see
that maybe there is a big picture to why you were unable
to conform to these social standards and values.
Maybe there is a deeper reason.
Maybe you didn't come here to fit into those standards in the first place.
Maybe, if you had been able to fit into those standards
our society would have no hope of evolving at all.
Have a good week.
Transcript by Jason Kraus Proofread by Friederike Peters Synchro by Jason Kraus Re-edited by Tanya Duarte