The Paralyzing Power Of Shame And How To Overcome It
Shame can have a tremendous impact on your life. It can cause you to form toxic relationships and keep you from getting out of them. Most people don’t understand shame or how to avoid these feelings.
Before you can understand shame, you need to know what it is. Shame is commonly mistaken for guilt. Guilt is when you know you did something wrong. Shame is when you think you’re wrong, bad, or unworthy. In short, shame is taking ownership over an action rather than understanding that the action doesn’t define you.
Krista Lynn is an attorney and blogger who has studied shame. She says that shame can be dangerous because it can become paralyzing if you let it define you. It’s important to remember that you are not your behavior. If you make mistakes, that doesn’t mean you’re less worthy of love or respect, a common impact of shame.
Now that you know what shame is, what causes it?
There are a couple of things that can cause shame. Some people develop this feeling from childhood. It often comes from wounds caused by childhood neglect or abandonment. You might not even realize that you have these feelings.
Children are not able to assess situations the way adults can. So when you’re neglected or abandoned as a child, you think it’s your fault. This causes people to subconsciously assume that actions are what creates love. The result is that you do what you think people want you to do to receive love.
A person’s shame can be increased by fear. This can be the fear that someone might not love you, of being alone, of being different, or of being judged. This fear allows the newly-developed shame to control your actions. The usual hope is that these actions will cause people to respond positively to you.
A major impact of shame is that it causes you to get into abusive relationships. This could be a romantic or business relationship. Oftentimes, the person ends up being physically or emotionally abused by a person that seeks something lacking self worth. This isn’t your fault, but patterns of behavior that have been learned since childhood.
A common misconception is that getting out of that specific relationship will end the abuse. While you might end the abuse of that specific person, you’ll continue to carry the behaviors that got you into that situation until you make changes to your mindset. You need to get out of the performance and reward mentality.
Therapy is a difficult but common way of changing your behavior and mindset pattern. Lynn says that reparenting is often a successful way of changing these behaviors. This can be difficult for someone with low self-esteem because it causes you to create a positive mindset. This includes congratulating yourself on achievements and realizing that you’re a good person.
While seeing a therapist or reparenting might be difficult, it is often necessary. It will help you learn new, positive habits that will keep you from re-entering the same toxic situations in which you’ve previously found yourself.
Lynn says that it’s okay if you’re not ready to begin improving yourself. Changing your lifelong behavioral patterns won’t happen overnight and might be difficult. You might even feel more shame for some of the necessary actions, such as ending a relationship, quitting a job, or cutting out a parent. But these actions might be essential for your well-being.
Krista Lynn is an award-winning attorney, deputy general counsel of Airbus OneWeb Satellites, and has a blog under the name Recovering Superwoman. If you’d like to learn more about Krista, read her work, or get in touch, visit your blog or her Linkedin.
If you’re looking to create a better overall mindset, book a free consultation through my website. You can also watch my weekly show, The Well-Balanced Mind, where I’ll provide insights into understanding your mind and behavior.
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