Happy Monday, Beautiful!
I was working with a client last week who has a large, daunting task that she must complete that involves some financial bookkeeping. Completing this task is her goal for the first quarter of the year. For several weeks we’ve talked about breaking the task into small steps and scheduling time in her calendar to work on it, so that she can make steady progress toward achieving her goal.
The problem is, she’s got a lot of resistance to doing the task. She’s getting sidetracked with other tasks that she tells herself are more important to do in the moment. Before she knows it, another day is over, and she hasn’t worked on her project.
She is stuck.
Last week I asked her to close her eyes and focus on her breath to get her fully present in the moment. Then I asked her, “What is underneath the resistance?”
Her answer?
“Shame”.
Now we were getting somewhere.
Shame stops us dead in our tracks because it tells us we are bad and unworthy.
I am a huge fan of Dr. Brené Brown’s work. She has spent her career researching shame and its impact on people’s lives. She says,
“Shame is the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love and belonging.”
So, of course my client was experiencing huge resistance to sitting down and working on her task.
She shared with me a time in her life where she and her husband experienced some financial difficulties and because of that, they were living beyond their means. The cause of their financial hardship was completely outside of their control, yet she feels shame for being irresponsible with their finances.
Each time she starts to work on her project, the painful feeling of shame starts bubbling up. Her reaction to the shame is to immediately distract herself by telling herself that there’s something more pressing in the moment that needs her attention.
I asked her if one of her children or a friend were experiencing a difficult financial bump in the road due to losing a job, would she judge them harshly and tell them they should be ashamed of themselves?
She said, “Of course not”.
Yet, she wasn’t giving herself the same compassion and empathy.
And so, it is with many of us.
We learn at a young age what behaviors, attitudes, and appearances gain the approval, or disapproval, of our parents, teachers, religious leaders, and society at large. Oftentimes the well-meaning adults in our lives shamed us for our “unacceptable” behaviors. Instead of simply correcting our behaviors, we felt like they shamed our entire being.
When I was a little girl my mom entered me into beauty pageants. I had won a local level pageant, so I advanced on to compete at a state level pageant. One of the things we were judged on was our interview skills.
I was 6 years old at the time and I vividly remember walking into a room with several adult judges sitting on one side of a long table. Across the table from them, was a single chair and they invited me to sit down. Sitting on the table was a plate stacked with chocolate chip cookies. One of them offered me a cookie and I very politely said, “Yes, thank you!” and proceeded to eat the cookie and answer their questions.
When the interview was over, I walked out of the room where my mother was waiting for me in the hallway. She saw the half-eaten cookie in my hand and asked me what that was. I told her, “A cookie! They were so nice, they gave me a cookie!”
She was furious. She said, “That was a trick! They wanted to see if you would talk and eat the cookie at the same time. You’ve blown it!”
I don’t believe my mom knew that her reaction to my eating the cookie in my interview would be the birthplace of my feeling shame. If she did, her response would have been different. She simply reacted.
But, in that moment, I felt immense shame and the result was that I created an image of who I thought I should be to gain the love and approval of my mom…and the rest of the world. I never wanted to feel that awful feeling again, and so “Little Miss Perfect” was born.
Little Miss Perfect is a B-I-T-C-H.
With her at the helm, I spent years, as Brené Brown says, “hustling for my worthiness”.
If I didn’t immediately excel at something, I quit because wanted to avoid feeling shame at all costs and people’s negative judgements of me induced shame.
I wanted to paint, but I wouldn’t allow myself to be a beginner. My first brush strokes on the canvas didn’t look anything like the completed paintings of the masters, so that was validation enough that I had no business painting.
There were so many things that Little Miss Perfect prevented me from doing, because after all, she had my back and didn’t want me to ever feel that horrific feeling of shame again.
Thankfully my soul is persistent, and it lovingly continued to nudge me to find my way back to my Self. It encouraged me to discover my gifts, allow myself to be a beginner, make mistakes, paint ugly paintings, and be loving and compassionate with myself along the way.
So what about you, Beautiful? What is shame preventing you from doing?
My girl Brené says,
“Shame needs three things to grow exponentially in our lives: secrecy, silence, and judgement.”
I assure you, shame is a Universal feeling. We ALL feel it, but it’s a feeling. It doesn’t invalidate you or your worthiness, unless you give it that power.
I want to leave you with this final quote from Brené Brown,
“Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot survive empathy.”
I encourage you to expose your shame. Meet it with compassion and shine light onto it so that it loses its power over you.
Share it with a trusted confidant. I know you may be shaking in your shoes at the thought of exposing your shame, but feel your fear, be vulnerable, and do it. Most likely your confidant’s response will be, “#MeToo”.
Your vulnerability may not just help you to heal, but also help your friend to heal.
If you don’t have a confidant you feel safe sharing with, I’m here for you. Please email me at lyn@blissfulheartcoaching.com and let’s set up a time to talk. I would love to gift you with a free 30-minute call to support you.
What’s waiting for you on the other side of shame?
Sending you so much love.