They do in mine. Love shows up as an expansion in my chest and a deep flow of breath. Shame as a contraction in my gut. Sadness lives in my chest as well, but it’s more like heat that pushes up through my eyes and manifests as tears.
Thoughts are lighting fast. It’s no wonder that we don’t always register the thought and instead, feel the echo of it in our emotional field.
I’ve been on the path of self-healing for the past three years. Just when I think I’ve unearthed all the boogeymen in my closet, a yet unhealed trauma gets triggered and I’m back on the merry-go-round of feeling not good enough, unworthy, and most damaging of all, believing that there is something fundamentally wrong with me.
The feeling of shame strikes next. I can’t look my partner in the eyes because of the disgust I feel. I want to hide. I feel embarrassed that I am here again. Despite the self-love work I’ve done and written about, shame has once again taken the reigns.
Does this sound familiar?
Shame is cyclical. I shame myself for feeling shame. I beat myself up and believe the voice that insists I should be further along in my healing. That I’m a fake and have been fooling everyone, including myself.
Feelings of disgust and contempt follow. The merry-go-round of self-hate and shame spins ever faster. I hunker down and wait for the shame spell to wear off and for my nervous system to return to normal.
Where is ground zero for your feelings of unworthiness?
Childhood. But you knew that, right? Somewhere along the way, your inherent value as a human being did not get mirrored back to you.
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It’s no one’s fault. We can’t give what we don’t have and it’s likely your parents/caregivers had no clue what they were doing. They were acting out of outdated patterns themselves.
Be that as it may, we find ourselves entering adulthood, feeling good about some aspects of ourselves, but when it comes to the most intimate relationship of all, the one with ourselves, we run out of love.
We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to think about it. We numb. We distract. We use alcohol and drugs to stop ourselves from imploding into the lack of self-worth, lack of self-love, lack of gentleness, and lack of self-care for ourselves.
These are painful thoughts that create extremely painful emotions.
Except they are not true
The merry-go-round you find yourself on is fueled by beliefs that have been programmed into you at a young age. Even though they may feel true, know that they are lies!
These beliefs create emotional pain in our bodies. We may feel nauseous, prickly, annoyed, punchy, hot, torturous, shut down, and disconnected.
For me, I feel like hiding. I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want my partner to show me love, because my core beliefs insist I’m unworthy of it.
I once asked my partner to be mad at me. And if not mad, then at least be disappointed in me.
When I heard myself say these words, it felt as though someone was talking through me because what I was asking him to do sounded horrible, unloving, unkind, and cruel.
Challenge the feeling. Just because it feels real doesn’t mean it is real. It’s an emotional reaction to an old belief that is nothing more than a deep groove called a neural pathway in your brain.
Neural pathways can be changed. It’s hard work, but absolutely possible.
When you start to feel the familiar feeling of unworthiness, have a conversation with it.
Say something like, Hey Shame. You’re back. I hear you telling me that I suck, that I haven’t amounted to much. That I am a disappointment. I hear you. I get it. You are just doing your job. Thanks for the info.
What this does, is create a gap between the thought and the feeling. You’ve made shame into something outside of you that you are having a conversation with, rather than continuing to internalize it.
It can’t hide. You’re onto it. You’ve called it by its name.
Tell shame that you disagree with it, that you think you’re actually a good person. Force yourself to come up with reasons why you are worthy.
This may feel hard, even downright impossible. You may feel like not doing it, but know it’s the program, the core belief wanting to trip you up and keep you in the familiar loop of self-hate.