I recently self-published a book entitled, Freedom From Shame. I wrote this book, not because I think I am an expert on the emotion of shame, but because shame has been a feeling I have struggled with at least since I was a pre-teen. Because shame has been a predominant emotion in my life, I have been intentional to find ways to befriend this feeling and attend to it. Perhaps shame, the feeling that you don’t measure up or are unworthy of belonging, is an emotion you have struggled with as well. I have felt the emotion of shame as a pre-teen when my mom drove to pick me up in her beat-up station wagon, as a teen when my dad lost his job to alcoholism, as a young adult when I didn’t feel as smart as my graduate school peers, as a married woman who watched my friends have babies while I struggled with infertility, and as a working mom who sometimes questions whether I am enough as a parent. This is a relatively short list of how shame has surfaced in my own life. I suspect, you too, have felt shame in a myriad of ways.

We all long to feel like we are enough. Shame whispers to us that we are not pretty enough, helpful enough, successful enough, unique enough, charismatic enough, smart enough, or popular enough. As Brené Brown says, “We’re never thin enough, extraordinary enough or good enough – until we decide that we are.” Brown is a famous shame researcher who also argues that if you put shame in a petri dish, the three ingredients shame needs to fervently grow are secrecy, judgement, and silence. I would also argue that perfectionism, fear, blame, disconnection, comparison, and scarcity thinking are additional components that help shame thrive.

Your individual personality informs how you respond to shame. Karen Horney identified three different neurotic trends people use to cope with anxiety that can be overused. People either move away, move against, or move towards others when they are feeling anxiety or shame. When you feel shame, are you more likely to move against others through being defensive or angry, move towards others through people-pleasing or helping, or moving away from others through withdrawing or shutting down? Brené Brown calls these three different responses our shame shields and it is important to be aware of how you respond when you are feeling shame.   

In addition to being aware of our shame and how we respond it, I think it is important to consciously cultivate antidotes to shame. I want to share with you three antidotes to shame in my life. These three remedies to shame help me to move from the belief I am not enough, towards a knowing deep inside of me that I am worthy of love and belonging.   

Self-Care

I often tell my clients that when they practice self-care, they are sending a message to their brain, body, and heart that they are worthy of love, which of course is a strong way of countering shame’s message that we don’t measure up. My favorite self-care practices include yoga, worship, affirming mantras, meditation, massage, antiquing and reading a good book.

Empathy & Self-Compassion

There are times when you might shame others and moments when you shame yourself. If you find yourself shaming someone else, remind yourself that shame cannot exist in the presence of empathy. Empathy is when we try to imagine what it must be like to be in someone else’s shoes, and this empathy helps you to soften your heart to the person you are shaming and in turn, practice more kindness to yourself. If you are shaming yourself, self-compassion is a spiritual practice that will help to alleviate shame. When I am feeling shame, I often practice the compassion meditation. This mediation invites me to offer compassion to myself, someone in my life who needs it, a place in the world in need of compassion and to offer compassion to someone I am at odds with. This meditation always helps me move out of my shame spiral. Empathy is a practice that helps me offer kindness to others, and self-compassion moves me towards accepting and seeing myself.    

Vulnerability

When I was in my 20s and 30s, I think both consciously and unconsciously, I felt like I needed to project the image that I had it together. It might be understandable to you that I felt this way, since I was serving as a chaplain who felt expectations from others to be a moral exemplar, who had it all together and did not need help. And so even though I had a counselor and spiritual director off and on during my 20s and 30s, I would only let my closest friends know I was in therapy. Now in my 40s, I know that vulnerability leads to a world that is more open, accepting, and authentic. I try to share my pain more openly with my loved ones, so that I don’t project the idea that I have spiritually and emotionally reached some sort of enlightenment. I am just as fallible and broken as anyone else, which is why I continue to see a spiritual director and therapist regularly.

There are many other practices in my life that help me wage war with shame including: finding new narratives for my shame stories, mindfulness, spiritual practices, offering and receiving compliments, body tapping (which is also therapeutically known as bilateral stimulation), and striving to be my true and authentic self. What helps you to fight the shame monsters in your head?   

When you hide with your secrets in your shame cave, you stay in the dark with them and this can lead to addiction, low self-esteem, co-dependent relationships, self-sabotage, loneliness, depression, anxiety, high expectations of yourself and others, and so many other problems. I hope you know you don’t have to stay in your shame cave, but you can come out of it through exercising self-care, empathy, self-compassion, vulnerability and other practices. If you don’t feel quite ready to come out of your shame cave, there are many great spiritual directors, therapists and clergy people in this area who are trained to sit in the dark with you as you explore your shame and eventually, they will teach you tools that can help you to heal it.

A version of this article was originally published in the http://mountainmirror.com