Moving On From Shame
Hi everyone! My name is Abby, I’m a mental health therapist. I am so excited about SHE UNITES because it feels like a great opportunity to connect with others and build each other up. That is so amazing for our mental health! I would love to be part of a group of women that encourage each other to reach all different kinds of life goals! Wouldn’t you? I think starting in a place where we can get past shame hang-ups is essential.
What is shame?
I see shame as a way that we think about ourselves that holds us back. It is an emotion-focused inward: examples being I am bad, I am ugly, I am stupid, no one likes me, basically boiling down to “I am unlovable or not enough”. We all have things we need to work on or goals we want to accomplish, but shame isn’t useful or motivating to us. I bet a lot of you have heard of Brené Brown, she defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling of believing that we are never good enough and therefore unworthy of love, belonging and connection.”
Our shame could be based on body image, sexuality, intelligence, status, relationships, or countless other reasons. What can bring us together is that we all have experienced shame and it makes us feel disconnected and alone, but that’s so far from the truth. Shame breaks our connection with others and makes us feel alone. We all have a narrative running in our minds about ourselves and the world. Usually, we don’t think to question our thoughts or feel like we have control over them. A quote I like is “don’t believe everything you think.” I’m not getting at saying “Okay now! Think positive all the time and never criticize anything!” because we all know none of us are perfect, and we all make mistakes. It's good to want to better ourselves and reflect on things. But it makes a big difference how we narrate our experiences in our heads. I want to point out the difference between shame and guilt. I bet we can all think of little examples where we did something that we later realized we shouldn’t have done. I know when I’m nervous I sometimes say awkward things and then later overanalyze them at 3 in the morning. If we take that experience and have a shame response we will be saying in our minds things like “I’m so stupid,” or “Why am I always so awkward.” The shame response is then focused on yourself, therefore we want to isolate and withdraw from others. If we have a guilt response we would be thinking “I shouldn’t have said that to my friend.” With guilt, we can acknowledge and take responsibility for mistakes without letting them define us. We have more of an outward focus and think about how we might have affected someone else, which might also lead to something productive like apologizing or setting a goal to do better.
What to do about shame?
Recognize it • Sit with it • Question it
Recognize shame
Connection with other people is such a big part of life. I’m guessing connection is probably why most of you were interested in SHE UNITES. If we want to build connections or find our why, as Natalie talked about on night one, we need to believe that we are worthy of that connection or those goals. When we are dealing with difficult emotions one of the most effective things we can do to combat it is to recognize it. Shame has a sneaky way of coming out as other emotions. For example, anger can be more comfortable for people to deal with, and we can use it to place blame or direct our emotional energy outward. It may feel good in the moment to release that energy, but it doesn’t resolve the shame.
We live in a time where we are kind of always connected, but maybe not in the most authentic way. We see glimpses of others’ lives and it's easy to compare that short glimpse to our own life. Shame doesn’t have to always be big, it can be simply feeling like you don’t measure up in small ways. Who feels like their house is never clean enough and everyone else is managing to keep it together? I know I do! The first thing we need to do with any negative emotion like shame is recognizing it. Sometimes it is good to actually set aside time to think about our thoughts or write them down.
Sit with shame
Once we learn how to recognize shame we need to learn how to sit with it. When we do that we do not act on the emotion in the moment, or make big decisions. Sitting with emotions is simply being mindful. Mindfulness is such a simple concept but can make such a big impact. Learning to observe what thoughts are going on in our minds and our reactions to events give a good idea of what our autopilot mind is doing. This can be a good time to reach out and connect with someone you know has your back to start rewriting those beliefs.
Question shame
Rewrite the narrative going on in your mind, don’t just forget it and move on. Talk about what triggered your shame and hopefully, in the future, you will recognize it faster and faster. Then work on putting things into perspective. Are these thoughts true? Are they helpful? Do they support me in reaching my goals? Do they fit with my values? it's great to have a supportive person to work through this with because often a caring friend is more compassionate with us than we are with ourselves, and if that isn’t possible, try thinking about it as if it’s your loved one going through it and what you would say to them. Even if we admit something needs to be changed there is no need to beat ourselves up on top of the discomfort of trying to change. Taking some time to recognize those thoughts and practice some self-compassion thoughts instead like “I deserve love and belonging” “I have the strength to forgive myself” or whatever feels needed to you. What would you want someone to tell you to comfort you? It’s okay to give that to yourself.
Being with others in shame
I wanted to also touch on how we can help others with shame and be in this together. Empathy is probably the biggest part of connecting with someone when they are in shame. Brené Brown has great information on empathy if you want more, but basically explains empathy as when we sit with someone and let them know that they aren’t alone. It’s tempting to want to fix problems for others or give advice, but I always believe that kind of takes away their control. People generally want to make their own decisions and feel like they work through a problem. I think if we don’t rush people in that process the amount of love they will feel will be far greater than if we made a list of solutions. So how do we do that? Help them dig through all of it. Ask some of the questions we would ask ourselves when working through a problem in our minds. Ask about their goals and values and how it fits with what they are thinking; ask what they see their options are.
Mental health is often put on the back burner, but it needs to be front and center. I think it can be like keeping your house clean. You can’t just clean up your house once in your life and expect it to stay that way forever. Sometimes the laundry gets backed up and you have to take most of a day to get it back on track. Well sometimes we also put our mental health off and it gets out of hand and we need to take time to get ourselves back on track. Maybe it's never perfectly clean and that is totally okay, too. We aren’t a finished product, which is kind of the beauty of our lives. We always have the opportunity to grow.
