Dear AlexandraW:
After reading your post and the comments I want to add two things:
1) As to a suggestion for you to focus on the needs of the person you want to connect with and not on your own- I may not be in touch with the context of this advice and taking it out of that context, but it is wrong, in my view. It is focusing on YOUR needs and viewing then any relationship or interaction with another as a win-win interaction is the way to go. But first your needs, this is your job and responsibility- YOU. My lifetime pattern of focusing on my (abusive) mother’s needs and not on my own was disasterous to me and prevented me from healing for decades.
2) If you are still in relationship with your shaming/ disrespecting/ abusive (any of these or all) familty members, if any of them still shames and disrespects you- it is your job and your responsibility to stop that shaming relationships or interactions by either asserting yourself and watching for a change in their behavior toward you or not engaging in contact with any or all of them. How can you heal if you are still allowing yourslef (now that you have the ability to choose) to be abused? Of course, if you are not and once you are not, you will still have to deal with the part of you that took after those shaming people in your life, the internal critic or abusive superego that is well established in your brain. As it has been in mine.

I do hope that over time you will experience more and more peace of mind and acceptance of all the things you are now ashamed of. I have a whole list of those… and over time I am feeling less shame. I don’t feel comfortable sharing here some of the things I am still ashamed of and I do not intend to do it becasue I don’t currently need to do it, but I feel way better about those things. I forgive myself for the ways I hurt myself and (more difficult for me) for the ways I hurt a few innocent others. I have to becasue I can’t go back into the past and do anything about it. For my benefit- and for the benefit of decent people who are or will be in my life- my best course is to forgive myself, reduce and eliminate (if possible, I do not know yet) shame.
anita