The Essence of Shame

Shame is an energy, something that we can feel and relate to, but we are not born with it.
Shame at is foundation is made of ideas about ourselves that we took on and absorbed through the course of our lives. The essence of these ideas is always self-judgment: we judge ourselves or a part of ourselves to be wrong and false.

Shame is not a primary emotion. It requires some amount of conditioning and active judgments to develop into what it is. But it is born of a primary emotion, which is sadness. Sadness is an emotion that goes along with loss. The loss of something dear and precious to us that is no longer part of our experience and consequently, we feel hurt and deprived.
This loss can be in relation to another human being, an object, but also with respect to a state of being: pride, joy, success, self-esteem, happiness or anything else we hold important.

Sadness is a slow and heavy energy and when fully experienced, has the power to open our heart to love and compassion.
However, it is not likely that you often experienced sadness this way. What is much more likely is that you suppressed and escaped our sadness, whenever it made its appearance, as most of us have learned to do.

Suppressed sadness is what shame most consists of. Instead of feeling our sadness and letting it go, we´ve come to make it part of our identity.
We`ve come to see ourselves as deficient in some way and to lose faith in the truth of our own self-worth.
In moving away from ourselves, we´ve felt a lot of sadness, but rather than merely experiencing the sadness and letting it go, we took it as evidence for our own unworthiness. That is what shame is all about.

We feel ashamed for the way we look or talk like, ashamed for our bodies, our sexuality, our addictions, ashamed for being indecisive, messy, slow, bad-tempered, sensitive, afraid or whatever it is we have judged and condemned ourselves for.
Shame has become our truth in many ways, though we might not even be aware of it. Whenever you feel unworthy, like a failure, broken and guilty, it´s shame kicking in.

Shame is nothing but an energy, made up of ideas and judgments, built on suppressed emotions. Indeed, you are given a choice each time you experience it.

You can choose to bow to your shame and let it define you. To buy into all of the lies it tells you: "Oh, I´m so horrible and unworthy, such a failure. No one else has these problems I have, I´m really outstanding in my awfulness."

You can choose to try and push it away from you, suppress it, stuff it, avoid it - only to discover that shame will catch up with you and increase in strength the more you try to escape it.

Or, you can choose to fully open up to your shame, feel it, receive it, even appreciate it. After all, if your shame is nothing but a bunch of thoughts and emotions, how could it ever have the power to harm and define you?
Shame is an energy, based on victimhood and powerlessness. Every time you bow to your shame or try to escape it, you´re actually reinforcing the lie of disempowerment.

So then, how to deal with your shame?
Welcome it, whenever you feel it. With the light of your heart, feel the sadness beneath your shame and give it the space to dissolve. You are so beautiful, so loving, so deserving. You know this to be true, deep inside your heart. So live from that truth! Be grateful for your shame, this remnant of a past version of you that no longer has the power to define and limit you. Embrace it and be free.