This Shame I Carry Is Not Mine

“Self blame is a direct link to childhood logic.” ~Jim Knipe

Self blame, shame, guilt, and negative self talk are such heavy burdens to carry. Do you ever wonder where it all originates? Often these thought patterns and behaviors are on a continuous loop that becomes so normalized across various situations, that many people don’t even stop to question their legitimacy. 

Whoa! Pause.

What is something you can think of right now that you do/think/or feel that’s been on auto pilot for years without question? Something that you’ve maybe just accepted is a part of “who are you are” now. Give it some thought, and let’s get curious.

Let’s also talk a bit about the brain and attachment.

Imagine growing up in a difficult household. Nobody talks about their feelings. If there are feelings expressed by adults, maybe the go-to emotional responses oscillated between anger and shut down. Yikes ~ that’s not a wide variety of emotions for a typical, breathing human. Doesn’t leave a lot of room for the other emotions to be expressed and accepted, huh? Chances are (since you’re human), that as a child/teen you would have your own emotional responses - maybe anger, but also fear, sadness, despair, disappointment, or even questioning your safety at times - just to name a possible few.

But now the question is - If it was never acceptable to show those emotions, what happened to them? How did you make sense of them? How did you go about regulating big emotions when your brain was still developing and staying attached to your parents was the biggest priority in life?

Part of therapy is challenging everything you thought you once knew. We gently take the subconscious out of auto pilot mode and we get curious. We say, “Hey! Can we check in to see why we react and speak to ourselves in the way we do?” We follow trails to the origin and make stops along the way, at different experiences and relationships, to see how these things began to take up so much space in your life and why. When we get curious, we get to understand the “why.” We get to also understand why it keeps coming up.

I mention shame, because shame and guilt come up A LOT. Somehow an experience, or another person, can make someone feel awful or triggered - and instead of honoring what’s coming up for that person in the moment, this very external event starts to become internalized. How does that happen? Often I hear so many people make judgements about themselves for why they do or say certain things, or even justify someone’s inappropriate behavior. When you say to yourself, “It’s my fault” or “I’m not good enough” or “What’s wrong with me?” have you ever paused to ask yourself if that voice even sounds like your own? Many are surprised with their own responses - a revelation that a message they’ve engrained and embodied without question for all these years is not even their own in the first place! This is where getting curious about shame starts to allow people to look at everything through a different lens.

Maybe the shame you carry is not yours to carry after all…

Stay tuned for Part 2, which dives a bit more into the attachment piece of all this!