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I knew I wanted to write about shame this week because the final video in our menopause month connects us with a feeling of pride and what’s the opposite of pride?
But somehow I just couldn’t connect, couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say, couldn’t figure out how to be authentic, in a public post about my own experience of shame. Shocking right? Who would have thought it!?
The one thing shame wants to avoid at all costs is being brought out into the light because that’s the one thing that dissolves it, and shame, like all of our parts, all of our emotions, wants to survive. So how do I approach this blog?
I’ve been writing these letters from Love with a beautiful community on substack created by Elizabeth Gilbert (check it out, I highly recommend it) and I wondered if actually Love might be able to help me with this so I wrote to love asking what I should know about shame, here’s the answer:
Dear Love, what would you have me know today about the feeling of shame?
Dearest Saffie,
Thank you for coming to us with this question, we saw you struggling with it and are pleased that you came to us for help. We can see that you want to start defining what shame is, delving into the brilliant work of Brene Brown, intellectualising and defining it. All of this is of value, my love, but none of it takes you closer to your own experience, and perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps that’s shame itself trying to stay out of your grasp, trying to avoid being looked at too closely because the thing you’re most ashamed of is shame itself.
You’re a therapist, right? You should be all sorted, right? What would happen if your clients knew that sometimes you’re triggered into a trauma response still, even now? Can you feel that? That emotion bubbling up inside you? That’s shame. Can you turn towards it? Can you greet it with open arms as another part of you to be loved? It’s ok if you can’t, it’s not that easy, even though you’re a therapist.
But let’s take a moment to return to that question, what would happen if your clients knew that you still sometimes get triggered into a fear response? And let’s be really really honest, it’s often rather than sometimes.
How would you respond to a therapist who still could get triggered and could also work through the trigger and come back to a place of calm? How would you feel if you knew that your therapist didn’t always have it totally together? Well you don’t have to imagine, you’ve seen other therapists talk about their own trauma responses and felt ‘here is a person that understands what I’m experiencing’. You’ve worked as a client with therapists like this and these are the times when you’ve had the biggest shifts because you’ve felt safest.
What if you no longer needed to be ashamed that you’re still managing your trauma responses? What if you could openly say, ‘Today I had a trauma response and here’s what happened. I don’t want to respond this way in these situations but I’m human and sometimes I do. I’m getting better and better at taking a step back and processing rather than reacting in the moment but I’m not perfect and I never will be because there is no end to this journey, there will always be new triggers, new layers of things to heal and that’s ok and I’m ok and I can still support others with the knowledge and experience and space holding ability that I have.’
What if bringing your shame out into the open gave others permission to do the same and what if, in fact, that was the most healing gift of all? We know, it’s really hard, it’s really vulnerable and scary, and we see you opening the door, beginning just a little bit to make public what was secret and we love you for it, love, Love x
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