EMBRACING YOUR SHAME

 

The healing process can only truly begin when we understand and embrace our shame.  Shame is the primary emotion responsible for creating and shaping the false selves that develop inside of us and eventually overshadows our being and our purpose. These false selves better known as sub- personalities are really survival roles which we create at first to help us make it in the confusing, complex and double-messaged environment of our family systems. These sub-personalities are warped images of our real nature that help to hide who we really are, they are also the means by which we get our emotional needs met as we know no other way.

 

 

At the outset of our lives when our logic and capacity to understand is not fully developed we are very vulnerable and easily influenced by the external factors to which we are exposed. So inevitably in an environment where unclear messages are given and conditions are placed on the love and attention we receive, we become unsure and insecure, struggling with knowing “how to be”. It is in this climate that our need to hide and create survival and defence-like roles begins.

 

 

If we can recognise our emotional disabilities, this may bring some painful realisations, fears and anxiety with it. It also brings with it the capacity to liberate ourselves and transcend that which limits us.  This liberation offers back to us our true identity and with it all the potential, ability and talent that we have either only had a taste of or, in most cases not yet discovered.

 

 

In the midst of the many survival roles that we have constructed along our way is a small, untrusting, confused and vulnerable child quivering in the corner of his or her own life, paralysed by the countless verbal and non-verbal messages of not “being good enough”. Housed within this sad and frightened child is great power and beauty from which we are currently isolated, due to the lack of relationship we have had with the child within. This distance we have from our own child is maintained by the subconscious and sometimes conscious scorn we have for ourselves. And whilst that exists our child dares not come out of the corner for fear of further retribution, scolding and humiliation as the intolerant and harsh voices compete to deliver their punitive and uncaring messages. With such hostility in the air how can the child ever feel able to come out of hiding? Is it any wonder we stay hidden and locked into particular negative roles?

 

 

It is for these reasons that we need to embrace our shame. That beautiful and frightened child needs love, attention, forgiveness, compassion and understanding. That child is you! and it needs all these attributes most of all from you. It is our lack of knowledge and awareness in this area which has created so much ignorance, lack of sensitivity and emotional blindness. It is time to change all this. A first step in the right direction would be to find some time everyday to greet our child with love, flowers, embraces and kisses. To offer our child praise and recognition and begin to build a bridge between that needy, misunderstood and fragile child of the past, and our incomplete and inadequate adult of the present. Then we can be empowered by the magic of this union.   Remember the contentment and stability we seek can be found in the tender, loving embrace of our own child. Let’s not neglect this relationship any longer.

 

 

 

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