Shame In Action (Or Inaction) 

When something happens to us that hurts our feelings, makes us mad, scares us, or – for me, in particular – proves to be very disappointing, shame is usually triggered.  “I’m not enough,” “They don’t like me,” “They don’t know what they’re missing,” “I screwed up, and am paying the price” “I can’t really do it, so to hell with it,”, etc. Are any of those part of your emotional response repertoire (as they can be for me)?  If so, how do you respond to it?  Are you even consciously aware of that being what’s happening when you suddenly put on the brakes with your dreams, your ambitions, your passion, and/or your work?  Does procrastination set in, aided by the subtle yet insidious helpmate, distraction?

If the answer is yes to those last two questions, then you can use that state as an indicator for you…an indicator that you’re in the midst of a shame attack.  When this happens to me, and I know from years of working with people on these issues, that I’m not alone…AND, I am no longer present.  I don’t just mean present in the room; I’m talking, not even in 2011.  I’m not really reacting to a current situation from my older, wiser, 53-year-old self.

No, I’m feeling and acting (or not acting) from a very young part of myself. I’ve been triggered into a wound, or wounds, that go back many decades. When that happens, I will often find myself responding from the same menu of responses that I first learned as a child, mostly from my parents.  When my mom got disappointed as I was growing up (and through her whole life, really), her stock response was to get mad or devastatedly hurt, which was almost always followed by her taking her energy away, usually into depression.  It was always about her wounds, but to cope with it, she had to first make it all about the other party who had (usually) inadvertently disappointed her.

I’m blessed to have finally outgrown adopting that particular habit of making it all be about the other “offending” party as a regular practice.  However, it’s become so easy to go radically to the other extreme, where it must ALWAYS be about me.  Either way, the egoic conceit and emotional hobbling that either side of the spectrum engenders ends up being crippling…unless we’re paying attention, learning to discern the difference between healthy shame and self-flagellating shame, and can better master discerning between when

These are the lessons I’ve seen this week – as I’ve ended up doing so much of what I learned from my family to and with myself – that I still get to keep learning and practicing at ever greater depths, in spite of my ego’s desire to feel it’s all handled.  And, you?