Hi Anita,

Thank you very much for both your responses. I really appreciate you continuing to take the time out to respond to me!

imagine that you have a child whose face is flushed and voice trembles.. you wouldn’t shame the child for these things, saying something like: what is wrong with you?! Why is your face flushed?! etc. Instead, you’d express empathy for the anxious child (and the child will calm down as a result). Next time your face flushes etc., try to peel off the shame about the symptoms from the fear that caused the symptoms, so that what remains is the fear itself. You can deal with the fear better without the shame getting stuck to it like hair on soap!

Yeah, I wouldn’t dream of shaming a child for being so blatantly afraid. My father mocked me for it in front of other people (even into adulthood), so I think there’s a secondary shame attached in that my own parent rejected me for who I was. I was fortunate in having a generally well-meaning mother, but even she pushed me to achieve constantly and didn’t seem able to just accept me simply for who I was at my core. I like your advice about separating the shame about the symptoms from the fear that caused the symptoms. I think I’ll probably journal about this and see what comes up!

Shame is a combination of a very painful emotion and thoughts, it is a bit more complex than fear, but still: what we fear is not the objective reality but the emotion of shame. We do what we do to get rid of shame as quickly as possible. A very important part of healing is to distinguish between actual situations that present us with real, clear-and-present-danger, and situations that are not dangerous, yet they activate intense fear in us as if they were dangerous. Same thing with shame: to distinguish between situations where we really wronged others and situations where … we didn’t but we feel as if we did.

Thank you so much for breaking all this down, it’s really helpful. Yes, working out where exactly my responsiblity lies in how I’ve treated others is a big one for me. An example of this is a former work friend who I’ve lost touch with and who I’ve been thinking probably thinks I’m not a nice person for not putting more effort in, but the reality is that for a number of years messages back and forth naturally became increasingly sparse on both sides as we went different ways in life and developed different priorities. My default reaction is to feel shame whenever I think about it, but when this happens I’m trying to be a bit more balanced about it rather than blaming myself entirely. I think it’s probably natural to feel some guilt over my lack of contact, but my shame reaction and over-responsibility are trauma based and not in keeping with the facts of the situation. I’m trying to be a bit more sympathetic towards myself in scenarios such as that as I have a tendency to take far too much responsibility.

As far as the painful mental-emotional habit of feeling shame when not doing wrong to others (or feeling intense shame for small wrongdoings, or for normal mistakes and/ or feeling intense shame regardless and long after we apologized and made amends), it is important to go back in time and figuratively hand that shame back to the shaming authority figure (usually a parent) where the shame belongs. In my case, I went back in time and handed my mother the shame that belongs to her. It is not a one-time visualization, but a repeated one. I am doing it again right now, as I type these words: in my mind’s eye, I see my mother and I say to her: This is your shame… not mine. I mistakenly carried your shame on my shoulders all these years… but it was never mine! I then place that package of shame by her feet and I walk away, leaving her and her shame behind me.

I love that you handed the shame back to your mother and were able to place it back exactly where it belonged! To do this and truly start to believe it must be really empowering. Over time and with repetition does the message in this visualization become more automatic? Currently I get caught up in analysing things and looking for evidence of where I might have been the problem.

This all feels a bit like peeling away the layers of an onion. I’ve been thinking about my core wound a lot and I think it’s very much a childlike “I’m bad” or “I’m going to get into trouble”. It’s based on a time when I genuinely probably would have been getting into trouble all the time, merely for being a child and existing. I had never actually done anything very wrong, so I assumed I was terribly flawed. Added to that is the secondary shame of having been bullied for my shame reactions by my father, sibling, people at school and a particularly nasty teacher. Then on top of that there’s been my own rejection of myself as an adult, wondering why I have such extreme reactions and why I’m so weird, then becoming hyper-focused on how I act around people for fear of being rejected.

Sorry if writing all this out is a lot, I’m having quite a few realisations and lightbulb moments just lately but don’t want to trauma dump or have anyone feel obliged to respond if any of it’s a bit much! Thank you once again for sharing your insights.