September 18, 2020

Shame is like a physical lockdown in the body, because it constricts us and retracts us and holds us back in life. It’s very debilitating. People will come to me a lot working with the issue around shame, because it is pervasive, it is everywhere. There’s somewhere in life that you’ve experienced shame yourself. I know it from myself. I had a hard time getting out of a shower, just looking at my body. The stuff that I said to my body… my God! It’s amazing my body still takes care of me, because I would just make every part wrong, just put it down or criticize it. It’s so horrible to do that to yourself, because then it becomes a sort of narrative of negative self-beliefs about your body and not being good enough. I felt shame to maybe go out in a swimsuit, show my body, and had some kind of beliefs about the body, and I know many of you watching, too.

It inhibits you. It inhibits your liveness. It inhibits your passion. 

It inhibits your trust for your life, yourself and who you are as a person.

If you start to identify as this sort of negative self-talk about what were ashamed of, then it becomes our worldview. That’s it. That’s how we start to relate to people, to ourselves and to life around us. The internal narrative that I had led myself to believe over and over again, because of my shame around my body.

When does that ever end? Does it end?

We’ve become obsessed with this outer-oriented fixation of the world and a very big disconnect towards the inner orientation, towards ourselves. That’s painful. That keeps us in a particular place, especially around a dialogue that puts us in shame – “You should be ashamed of your body”. This starts very early on in our lives, of course. This is just one area. We can talk about shame in many areas of our life. It can often show up during intimacy, during sexuality… all sorts of places. Your identity, who you are, where you come from, the colour of your skin. So, the issue of shame is really big. It really holds us back in life.

If you’re someone who feels like ‘I can relate to this topic’, then there is already something you can do.  One of the things I say in my workshop is “Take a moment and just look in your life where shame shows up”. Where is it? Where do you identify it? How does it debilitate you and hold you back? See if you can pick one. It doesn’t even have to be the biggest biggest one, just something to start with. Oh yeah, that area of my life I’m ashamed of. I’m ashamed to stand out in front of people. I’m ashamed to be seen. I’m ashamed about my body. I’m ashamed around my sexuality. Whatever it may be. So, when you’ve got them, take a moment, five or ten minutes, and write. If you don’t want to write, you can just sit and reflect.

What is my story around shame?

How does it keep showing up in my life?

What do I keep telling myself about it?

What would my life look like if I did not have that shame?

As if I was going to take a 360-view of my life. What would I notice? What would be different? Often you can feel it in the body already – a sense of liberation, a sense of ‘Oh, my God, it would be so much better!’

Okay, so then I want you to take the last step in this. Think of somebody that you know and love and trust, and see if you can find a time to meet them, preferably not in a coffee shop or sort of a busy stimulated place, but where you can be really one-on-one with them and have this talk with them, and talk about your story around shame.  This is so important, because shame loves to keep building its story in hiding. It gets bigger, it gets gigantic, and it becomes so big that it feels like a heavy burden of weight. Then we stop ourselves from really doing the things that we love to do in life. By that simple movement, that simple action, that simple step towards freedom, of sharing your story around shame, it opens up that contracted restricted place in your body, in your breathing, and also in your view of yourself. It changes something. Just that simple movement can already transform the place where you carry that shame.

It works, guys. I know it for a fact. I know that the moment I start to talk about my body, my relationship with my body, and my shame around the body, it lightens. That charge is less.

That’s important, because we got this one life, and we really want to live it to the fullest, in the freest, relaxed way possible. Why not? Playing life in a small framework and existing from a small shrunken place through our entire life – it’s no fun. It’s no joy.

What does shame ever really give us at the end of the day?

So, it’s really a choice where we can start to look at it differently, which is what this work is about for me. This is a dear to my heart passionate work and I hope that you receive something through this post.

With love,
Rupda