"Am I Ever Going to Heal from My Shame?" | Healing Shame as Part of Complex Trauma Recovery

Part of the healing process is the self-awareness.  So let me begin by saying this. One of the questions that I get asked all the time  when people start realizing what shame is, is they ask me, "Am I ever gonna get over this? 

Will I ever heal from shame? " And what they're hoping I'll do is say, "Yes, on this date in  2020, you will be over your shame. " And what they are really realizing, though, as they get  to understand shame, is how deeply rooted it is, how much it affects every part of their life. 

And so, they begin to realize there's going to, this is going to be a, a lifetime journey, that  you have s- thousands of triggers. You have all kinds of things that get kicked into motion once  you're triggered. And so, what you see when you start healing and growing is a bunch of different  things.

You get triggered less, first of all. And if you're dealing with the shame once it's  triggered, if you deal with it in a healthy way, then you don't get triggered as often in that  same area. So you'll start getting triggered less, and then if you're healing, the triggers become  less intense, and then you're able to process through them more quickly.

So currently, it could  be that once your shame is triggered, you're wiped out for two days in your head and in all your dark  places. As you heal and grow, you can begin to work through stuff in five minutes, an hour, and  you're, you become kind of amazed at how quickly you get through stuff. So it is possible to make  lots of healing steps forward, but probably the journey will go on at some level, to some degree,  for the rest of your life.

But I don't want that to be discouraging, because as you start to  feel the healing, you'll be surprised at how much better you feel overall. So you will begin to  experience benefits very quickly as you begin to deal with it. Part of what determines how long the  journey's gonna be is how much shame is there in your life, number one, how many triggers do you  have, and how safe are your relationships?

You can't heal from shame in an unsafe environment.  So you need to have sh- safe people, safe, uh, environment, or else if you're with unsafe people,  you just keep getting shame messages. So the better you're able to have safe people, the faster  you can heal from shame.

Next thing I want you to understand is this: the initial healing from  shame is very real, but it's very fragile. Some of you might have this experience. You've been  working on yourself.

Let's say you've been coming to Finding Freedom React, and you're starting to  feel better for, about yourself. You're actually starting to respect yourself and accept yourself,  and you're feeling really good, and then you go and spend the, the day with Mom. And you come back  going, "I didn't think I, I guess I never learned anything.

I'm right back to feeling crappy about  myself. " And the point is this. You grew, but that growth is fragile.

Uh, it's like new leaves on a  brand-new baby plant. And, and the slightest thing can destroy them. So part of what you have to do  in recovery is really set boundaries to protect that growth so it can solidify and become stronger  and stronger.

So that is just upfront that you need to be aware of. Okay, so I wanna give you the  four steps of healing that we've talked about so far. And you may not have realized, I was throwing  some of these in as we went along in the first five talks, but over every talk, there's been an  element of self-awareness.

And what we focused on last week is that to heal from shame, you have  to take this thing that's been operating at a subconscious level and bring it to the conscious  level so you understand how you're triggered, what you do when you're triggered. Then you can change  it once you get it to that conscious level. So self-awareness is the first thing.

Second thing,  two weeks ago, we talked about the lies we believe about ourselves, both about our value and  about what gives us value. And so now, you begin to replace those lies with the truth, and  we talked about that and what it means to respect somebody else and the different types of respect.  We've talked about all of that.

So the point was this. In dealing with shame, there is a cognitive  part. There's a, a replacing lies with truth part, but it's not the only part.

There's an emotional  part and all, uh, lots of that that we're going to get to. The other thing that we saw is in  your brain, you have a, a limbic system that has become a bad. .

. It speaks a lot of lies  to you based on how you feel. And shame is a negative feeling, and so your limbic brain  says, "You're not worth anything.

You don't, you shouldn't respect yourself. You deserve  to fail," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But now you've got a cortex that disagrees with your  limbic brain.

So you have a br- a, a battle going on in your brain between your limbic brain and  your cortex brain. And so the goal of recovery is that your cortex brain trumps your limbic  brain. So when shame gets triggered, limbic gets fired up, and it wants to trump your cortex. 

And so what you're doing in healing is saying, "Shut up, limbic brain. Here is the truth. I'm  not listening to the distorted stuff you tell me, and it feels like truth, but I know it's a lie. 

And now I'm going to respond and act on my cortex, not on my limbic brain. " And then the other piece  that we talked about is beginning to have positive affirmations about yourself that you know are  the truth about your value, about who you are. So that's part of that cognitive piece.

The third one  that we've talked about with that is developing a healthy value system. So shame says, "I have no  internal value. All my value comes from what I do or from my external world.

" And so now what you  have to do in healing shame is saying, "I can't base my value on what I do or my external world,  because what happens if that changes and I'm no longer able to do it? I have to find my value in  my internal world, my inherent value. " And that, all of these are a process.

All of these don't  happen overnight, but they are stuff that you begin to work on, and you begin to experience the  changes. So getting the right value system. Now, one thing I wanna add to that is we talked about  sometimes there's a healthy part of getting value from what I do, but if that's the only source  of what makes me feel valuable, then it's gonna lead me astray.

So I need to be serving in some  capacity, but I have to get value from all kinds of other healthy things, not just from service.  So that was the third one. The fourth one, if I have value, I treat myself with respect. 

My limbic brain says, "I don't feel valuable, so I'll treat myself by beating myself up,  putting myself down. "-cortex says, "No, I have value, so I will treat myself with value  even though I don't feel like I have value. " So you're acting your way to new healthier  feelings.

You're saying, "I have value, treat myself that way regardless of how I feel. "  And that is the challenge in dealing with shame. You are choosing to act on what you know is the  truth, even though you don't feel it's that way.

So you're fighting your feelings by choosing  to act by treating yourself with respect. And that can be some of the hardest stuff to do.  Treat yourself with respect.

So bottom line is, as you treat yourself with respect, you start  to feel more respect for yourself. You start to feel like you can require others to have to treat  you with respect. You don't have to put up with their disrespect.

And that creates even greater  growth for you in dealing with shame. So those four we've kind of covered. Now I'm going to bomb  my way right through a whole bunch of other ones.

Some are going, we could go for a whole session  on them. I'm giving you the Coles notes. But it's really key important stuff.

So the next one is  accepting yourself. Now, here's what I want you to understand. When I first started working  in the counseling world 30 years ago, what was being talked about all the time was, uh, y-  you got to love yourself.

Low self-esteem was on everybody's radar. And you got to love yourself.  But what they were saying was, you have to try to create feelings of love for yourself.

And what I  found in working with people with tons of shame, they couldn't stir up good feelings to themself.  So if they went to a workshop and they said, "Look in the mirror and tell yourself you love  you and feel all warm and fuzzy to yourself. " They're going, rolling their eyes going, "Who  is this quack job that's running this class, 'cause I can't stir up any positive feelings.

"  And so I said, "Okay, for deeply shamed people, that does not work, initially. " Where they have  to start is not trying to get warm feelings to themselves, they have to start by saying, "I  accept me. I choose to accept the body I was given.

I choose to accept the personality I was  given. " And what does shame say? "I don't like who I am, because I think that's the reason I've been  neglected and abandoned.

So I wish I wasn't a shy, quiet person. I wish I was the outgoing leader  that was funny all the time. " And you wished for a different personality.

You wished for a different  face, and all those different things. You start by making a choice. "I choose to accept this package. 

I choose to accept the way I was born. " Now that is easier said than done, because you've never  done that before. And so what's going to happen is, once you start to want to get down your- on  yourself because you're feeling your shyness, and nobody's wanting to talk to you 'cause you  want to sit in the corner all by yourself.

You go, "You know what? I'm shy. Instead of seeing  that as just a negative, I wonder if there's positives s- from being shy.

" And you think about  it from a positive perspective. So let me give you this. When I was young, I was super shy, I was  super analytical, and I didn't like that about myself.

Because I didn't relate to people my own  age. They wanted to talk about stupid things, about the latest girl that everybody was excited  about. And I wanted to talk about deeper stuff, and no one- none of them were interested.

And so I  just didn't connect. And I wished I was something different. And then at some point I thought,  "You know what?

I wonder if there's benefits in being this shy thinker. " And I began to look  at it from those eyes. And you realize I would never be effective at what I do today if I wasn't  a shy thinker.

So I began to realize, being shy has a lot of positives that outgoing people don't  have. And so those are the things that you begin to think about. Okay.

N- next one, not only are  you accepting who you are, you also need to accept your past. So what happens with shame is, "I hate  my upbringing. I wish I didn't have it.

I wish I had a whole different set of c- circumstances. "  And you can stay in that place of, "I wish, I wish, I wish," or, "If only," for the rest of  your life. Or you can come to a point where you say, "I can't go back and change anything.

So  instead of seeing it as all bad, I wonder what I could learn from it that would make me a better  person? Instead of just being bitter and resentful about it, let's learn the lessons from it. " And  you want to know what you'll find?

You'll learn lessons from your past that people who don't  have your past will never learn. And you will gain strengths from that, that they will never get  based on their past. And so at some point you say, "I accept me and I accept my upbringing.

As crappy  as it was, I choose to accept it. " Third thing you have to accept, healing is a slow journey. And  it is a messy journey.

So everybody that comes into recovery wants the silver bullet that is  going to be the magic pill that they take and they're fixed and they never struggle again. I was  talking with somebody today who works with people that are in kind of the- the most severe federal  penitentiaries, for the most severe crimes. They all want to get well.

Not all, but many want to  get well, as long as they don't have to work very hard at it. As long as it's easy. As long as it  doesn't require much change.

That's what they want. So they all say, "I want to get better. I  just don't want to do the work of getting better.

" So here's what I do with clients, this little  gr- graph. This is what growth in dealing with shame looks like. You make some progress.

You get  triggered, fall flat on your face. What happens when you fall flat on your face? You walk around  and say, "I guess I didn't learn anything.

I'm so stupid. " And you feed your own shame and you  beat yourself up. Wrong response, but that's the normal response.

So eventually you pick yourself  back up and you start working again and you start making more progress, get triggered, fall flat  on your face. And that goes like that for a long time. But what I want you to see is that the  overall progression of the graph is you're getting higher and higher.

You're growing. So think of it  this way. When you have a bran- or a baby that's getting to that one-year-old mark, and they take  their first step, do you go.

. . "You fell on your face.

" "You're a failure. You should be ashamed of  yourself. " No, you're applauding.

Going, "Way to go, way to go. Get back up. Try that again.

" And  you don't fault them, you don't judge them, you don't criticize them. You realize that to learn  such an important skill like walking, which I'm told takes several hundred muscles within the body  to get all figured out how to stay balanced, you know that takes a lot of falling on your face. And  what you're hoping is that over time, they'll fall less and less, and walk more and more, and then  they'll eventually run.

That's recovery. You are learning a whole new set of skills that is using  muscles and abilities and brain circuits that are brand new, that you've never used before. You're  not going to get it perfectly the first time.

If you don't accept that the journey's like this, you  are going to beat yourself up and feed your shame every time you fall on your face. And you will not  progress very far. So accepting the nature of the journey is important.

Now let me add one piece  to this. The problem with complex trauma is that failure becomes something that the person sees  as only bad. Failure never led to anything good, just to pain and punishment.

But what was the  actual design of failure? It was positive. It was to be an example that you could learn from.

So,  failure was to be turned into a positive. That was the design. But if you come from a background  where failure was always bad and always was painful, you're afraid of failure.

And so what  you're doing in recovery is changing your thinking there and saying, "Okay, I'm going to fall on  my face. That's not the end of the world. That doesn't mean I'm a total failure.

That means I now  have something I can learn from so I don't repeat that again. " And it turns into a positive learning  experience. Number eight.

And you- you're gonna see these all begin to overlap a little bit, but  you have to forgive yourself for what you've done in the past. And when you fail today, you have  to deal with it, change, and forgive yourself. So what happens for a child that comes out of complex  trauma?

When you do something wrong, there's no way to fix it. You get punished for it, you get  thrown in your face, and so you learn that if you fail, beat yourself up, beat yourself up, get down  on yourself. That's how you were parented, that's how you now parent yourself.

That feeds shame. Now  let me take it a step further. You have done a lot of things that you're greatly ashamed of, stuff  that has hurt your children and created trauma in them.

You made a lot of mistakes in your teens and  20s that you wish you could redo and take back. But you have to, with complex trauma, go back to  the child who's living in danger that they cannot resolve, they cannot fix, they cannot get out of  to a healthy place. What was their only solution?

Fight, flight, freeze. Survival. The very tools  needed to fight, flight, freeze, lying, not trusting, wearing masks, they messed up your life,  but don't punish the child for trying to survive.

Don't punish the child for using the only tools  they had available to survive. You can't go back and change that child's decisions, so don't punish  them, don't punish yourself for those survival decisions. You can change them now, and you need  to do that, but stop beating yourself up for the things you did to survive.

That is the point I  want you to get. Now let me take it further. Many people think of forgiveness as a feeling, a limbic  brain thing.

"I'll feel or I'll forgive myself when I feel that I've paid for my crimes. " Well,  guess when that's gonna happen? Never.

Because you'll keep beating yourself up, which will lead  to more failure, which will lead to more beating yourself up, et cetera. It becomes a vicious cycle  that is spiraling downhill. So what you have to do is this.

I choose to forgive myself. And what  that means is if I fail or if I have a memory of a failure, instead of going to the negative tapes  in my head where I beat myself up, I say, "Nope, not going there. I forgive myself.

I choose to  change. I choose to learn from that and become better because of it, but I'm not going to go  beating myself up. " That's what forgiveness is in forgiving yourself.

Absolutely essential if  you're going to deal with your shame. Now the next two are tied together. Remember we said  that shame is a child looking into the mirrors of the people in their life.

And the people of  significance in their life reflect back to them by what they say and do the value of the child,  who the child is. So if the child's neglected and abused and abandoned, what's being reflected back  to them is, "You're a zero. You're not worth love, you don't have value.

" So those are the mirrors of  their life, but they're all distorted mirrors. So what you have to do now if you want to heal your  shame is you got to surround yourself with more accurate mirrors, people that will reflect back  to you a more accurate picture of your value, of who you are, that you are lovable, that you  are significant. But then with that, you need boundaries with unhealthy mirrors.

So you might  have to say, "I can't hang around with my mom for now, 'cause the growth and the healing is too  fragile, and if I spend too much time with her, it's gonna get mowed down and crushed. So I'm  gonna need some boundaries with the distorted mirrors of my life. " You want to r- know that  that's one of the hardest parts of recovery for a lot of people.

You want to know what many  people are still looking for and they don't even realize it, even though they might be 30, 40,  or 50 years old? They're still longing for Mom and Dad to validate them. So every time they grow,  which is gonna happen as you deal with your shame, guess who they want to go tell about it?

Mom and  Dad. So Mom and Dad will go, "We're so proud of you. " Usually doesn't happen that way.

And you  go running to Mom and Dad and you say, "I, I, I'm growing. Here's what's happening. " And they'll,  "Think you're better than us, do you?

" And they mow you right back down and you're crushed again.  So you have to realize, if I keep looking to them to validate me, I'm never going to heal beyond a  certain point. I need boundaries with those kind of people, and it's usually family members that  need them the most, until I get strong enough to deal with it, and I need to find healthy mirrors  who give me good validation, and I need to learn to validate myself.

So boundaries with mirrors  is crucial. Okay? So that's not something you do internally.

That's saying other people still  influence my shame. And so I have to have a system in place to protect myself from the wrong  ones. Next one.

Connect with healthier people, and I'm not just saying. . .

. . .

have healthier people  as your mirrors. What I mean is this. Shame was caused by not being able to connect at an intimate  level with people, and so you've concluded that the reason people didn't connect with you is  'cause you weren't good enough.

It was your fault. And that creates the shame. A huge part of  healing shame is connecting in a healthy way with safe people.

You wanna know the fear of  a shame-based person is? "I'm gonna develop a relationship and I'm gonna start become more  authentic. I'm gonna take my masks away, I'm gonna start to open up.

" And then you get to some  doozy secret, and then you share it and you go, "Oh, they're probably judging me. I can never  face them again. " And you go to that place.

You wanna know what usually happens when you do  that? If you're with healthy people, they go, "You go through that? I went through that.

Wow,  it's so good to have somebody that understands. " And you go, "I wasn't judged. I was loved,  I was accepted.

I'm, I'm respected. " And you heal a little bit more. So part of connecting  with people is opening up, not being judged, but then developing conversations and interactions  that go to the real stuff in your life.

Okay, next one. We're flying along. Begin to learn  about yourself.

What does shame do to a person? You don't like who you are. You try to become  somebody else.

Now when you start to heal, you go, "I don't know who I am. I don't know  if I'm outgoing, I don't know if I'm shy, I don't know if I'm funny, I don't know if I'm  serious. I don't know who I am.

Don't know if I'm good at sports, I don't know if I'm good at  administration. " Total blank. You know all the roles you played, you know all the masks that  you wore, but you're not sure who you really are.

Do things that help you find that out.  Take personality type tests, read books on that. Begin to explore what interests me.

Maybe  I'll take guitar lessons, maybe I'll try an art class. Maybe I'll try martial arts. Whatever.

Try  different things to find out what you're good at. Now, here's what you have to understand. What does  shame do when you go to try a new thing?

"Uh-oh, what happens if I'm not good at it and I look  stupid? Ooh, I better not risk trying anything. " So in order to get to know yourself, you gotta  push through shame and risk failing and looking stupid and moving out of your comfort zone.

But as  you do that, you realize, "Nobody killed me and I didn't die, and I actually grew from that. " And  you get more courage to keep doing it. Next one, grieve your past.

So I talked about accepting  your past, but that doesn't mean you're happy about your past. It means there's a lot of crap  that you have to grieve. So a couple things that I want you to think about.

One of the things  that you're grieving with shame is you didn't get a healthy childhood that you should've got.  So you're grieving something you never had, but you should've had. So you've  lost something that you've never had, but you've lost something you should've had.

And  so part of what happens as people get to know about complex trauma and their shame is they begin  to realize how much their childhood affected them, and they start to go, "I wish I had a different  childhood. I wish I didn't go through that. " And then they start grieving what they didn't have. 

Secondly, you grieve the many losses that you did have. The loss of connection, the loss of certain  friendships, the loss of certain things because of choices by family or yourself. So there's a  grieving part that is part of the healing process.

Next one, you have to have a clean conscience. So  what we talked about in the first talk was this: guilt is about what I do, shame is about who I  am. The problem with complex trauma is when you do something bad, they say you are bad.

So they  blend guilt and shame. And so what happens now, when you fail, you do something morally wrong,  you tell a lie, you cheat, whatever, it feeds your shame. And you walk around saying, "Not only did I  fail, I'm a failure.

" And it feeds your shame. So, if you do something morally wrong and your  conscience bothers you, clean it up right away. 'Cause if you don't, it's gonna keep bugging  you and it gradually's gonna pull you into deeper shame.

So that becomes an important piece. Next  one, service. And what I wanna say about this is, for many people, service is important in finding  out what I'm good at, what I can offer people.

And it helps me heal to realize I have something to  offer. But for some people it's very dangerous, because if you got your validation as a child from  helping everybody, and you were the perfect little servant around the house, and that's where  your validation came from, to step back into a service role could really mess you up. Because it  could pull you back into looking for validation, which comes like a drug.

So you, if that was  part of your validation growing up, be very careful as you get into service. Don't go there  unless people in your life think you're ready for it. Because it's very easy to get there,  and then once you're there, you stop working on yourself, you get wrapped up in all that  you're doing.

And then if you're struggling, you're afraid to say anything 'cause now  everybody's looking up to you, and it becomes a disaster. Next one. Many people find there's a,  a value in healing shame in the spiritual thing, in a higher power, in a new belief system that  is a better definition of happiness, of value, of what makes life work.

All of that can be  important. If you do have God or a higher power, that becomes for you a mirror that you believe is  the most accurate mirror in the world, and that tells you the truth about yourself better than  anybody else. So that one is important.

Next one, humility versus humiliation. Now, here's what I  want you to understand. A lot of people, cultures, religious people have defined humility as shame. 

And I want you to understand that. If you go to many places and ask them to define humility, guess  what they'll say? "You're worse than everybody.

You never walk around and say, 'I accomplished  something. ' You see yourself as less than. And so if you ever feel good about yourself, shame on  you, you're proud.

You should be walking around saying, 'I'm a nobody. I'm no good. '" And that's  how they define humility.

You realize that is the wrong definition. And if you're going to heal from  shame, you need the right definition of humility. And the right definition of humility is this: You  see yourself accurately.

And what does it mean to see yourself accurately? I'm not better than or  worse than anybody. Humans, we're a level playing field.

We all have equal value. Secondly, humility  says, "I want to learn. I want to keep growing.

" I don't want to get locked into this place where  I can't risk trying anything for fear of failure, or I can never be wrong because I might  be humiliated. So the fear of people from complex trauma is, "If I humble myself, I will  get humiliated," and humiliated was terrible. Humility is totally different.

It is seeing myself  accurately. It is being open to change, to growth, to learning. And that is absolutely essential  if you're going to heal shame.

Now, the next one is inner child. Now, we spend a lot of time at  ReACT. Let me just say a few things.

Inner child, for a lot of people, they go, "Oh, that's hokey.  That's just weird. What are you going to ask me to do?

" So here's how I talk about it. I think  everybody that I deal with from complex trauma, if I say, "Do you still sense there's a little  child in you somewhere? " They all agree.

And then I go, "Okay, let's just focus on that little  child inside of you, which is a younger you. What emotions is that child feeling? " And  they'll go, "Well, they're hurt, they're sad, they're angry, they're full of fear.

They got  tons of shame and they hate themselves. " I say, "Okay, so that child, that inner you, that little  you, has nothing but negative emotions. How does that child look physically?

They've  got their head down. They're curled up in a fetal position. They can't look at people  in the eye.

" They can define and describe that child. "Okay. How does that child feel about  you, the adult?

" "Ooh, he doesn't trust me. " Why? Because I abandoned that child.

I hated that  part of me. I didn't want anything to do with that part of me. I was impatient with that part of  me.

I was embarrassed by that part of me. Okay, so that child feels abandoned by you and doesn't  trust you. But that child is you.

It's a part of you. So healing from shame is taking that part  of you that you've rejected and been embarrassed by and accepting it and nurturing it so that it  feels loved and it can heal and become part of the adult you. So that's what this is about.

So then I  say, "Okay, let's just say one of your biological children spilled their milk or fell off their bike  and tore a hole in their brand new pair of pants. What would you do to that child as they're crying  and angry at themselves? " You would hug them.

You'd say, "It's okay. It's just things," etc.  You would nurture them and comfort them.

I go, "What happens if your little child fell off  their bike and messed stuff up? " I would be in that child's face criticizing them, calling them  down. So here's what I want you to understand.

You parent your biological child differently than you  parent yourself. You're loving and nurturing and comforting and understanding to your biological  children because you know what shame-based parenting did to you, but yet when you parent  yourself, you still use shame-based parenting. People don't grow from shame or heal from  shame until they parent themselves in a loving, nurturing way.

And that starts with that little  part of you that you've always been embarrassed by. So let me just read this. I- it came out  recently.

I, I found it. It says, "Toxic shame has its root in t- childhood, abandonment, abuse and  trauma," and you're familiar with all that. "As such, feeling better will almost always go back  to assess- accessing your childhood self, the very part of you that was confronted with the trauma in  the first place.

Learning how to interact with and care for your younger self is called inner child  work, and there are a number of reasons why this practice is powerful. Firstly, inner child work  helps you access feelings that you have repressed and disassociated from in an attempt to protect  yourself as a child. By re-experiencing these emotions, you'll be able to release them from  your body and mind and generate deep healing.

" So you connect emotionally. "Secondly, inner child  work is tremendously insightful and revealing. Often some of the most important questions  you've carried consciously or subconsciously are answered while doing inner child work. 

And thirdly, inner child work is learning self-compassion in action. When you learn how to  reparent your inner child, you develop a deep, strong connection with yourself which has a ripple  effect on the rest of your life. " So what's inner child work?

Reparenting yourself, learning to  parent yourself with compassion, learning to stop beating up and rejecting and abandoning yourself.  Final point, number 19. Be patient.

It takes time.