I had a conversation last night with a group of beautiful women and in our conversations the topic of shame came up. We spoke about how each of us experience shame in our own unique ways and at times sat in silence together, almost tangibly feeling the heaviness of our collective shame and a sense of sadness for the shame that women have carried for centuries. I was touched by this experience and felt it necessary for us to talk about this more.
Of all the emotions we experience, shame is the most useless. It gives us nothing valuable and it steals from us. It is explained in the dictionary as an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness and worthlessness.
We all experience sadness, anger and grief. It’s often clear why we feel those emotions and there are concrete things we can do to feel better, yet shame takes on a different form and often creeps into our consciousness without noticing. It silently walks with us, dragging us down. But more so, it almost seems to be a part of being a woman. Ouch! Like shame is just something we do as women and that men don’t feel this as often as we do.
From our conversations we discussed how shame shows up in our lives.
- Limiting beliefs or lies we believe about ourselves making us love ourselves less
- Perfectionism and trying too hard to get it all right
- Societal pressure about who and what we should be or have in certain times in our lives
- Social media and the online world causing more comparison to what others have that we might not have or setting unrealistic expectations for our lives that we can’t necessarily meet
- Our innate nature to give to our world around us and the shame we put on ourselves for not being there enough for others or putting others before ourselves yet still feeling like we fall short and there is more we should be giving or being
- Mothers who experience guilt to be the best mom they can be yet also hold a job and not being able to do it all the way they expect themselves to
- Anxiety or depression that might be rooted in unnoticed shame
- Shame placed on us by the perspectives of others or our culture. If they see me as less than then how can I be more? How other’s perspectives or judgements of our lives influence our judgement of our own lives.
In the context of our other emotions shame really doesn’t have anything to offer us besides making us feel powerless and worthless. In comparison, anger tells us that we are being wronged, or our boundaries are being crossed, sadness tells us there is something that needs to be acknowledged and felt and grief tells us we loved something so deeply it hurts. In the context of this there is no good reason for us to hold onto shame. And yet, we seem to coexist with it.
So how do we de-shame our lives then?
First of all, we need to notice it. Shame has a way of dressing itself up as guilt, anxiety, fear or just and overall feeling of heaviness. If we don’t notice it for what it is, we might make it about something else and when shame hides itself in other emotions it becomes toxic.
Secondly, name it for what it is. See it and acknowledge it. It’s ok to feel shame, it’s a problem when we hold on to it and make it a part of our identities.
Thirdly hold yourself in a different perspective. De-shaming comes from ‘seeing’ ourselves in a different light. Not without the shame, but with the shame not attached to us. That we are not our shame, and we should never look at our lives through the lenses of shame.
Looking at the list above of what often makes women experience shame, I think it is only realistic to say that we can’t cut shame out of our lives, it comes with sometimes the heavy load that just lands on women, but we can notice it, acknowledge it, name it and choose to not make it part of our identities.
How can you hold yourself in a different perspective today? Whatever it is that caused you to feel shame, whether you know the root of it or not, you are not your shame and your identity as a woman is so much more than that.
I will confidently say this to myself today. “Hi shame, I see you, I don’t know exactly where you came from or what made you show up in my life, that is irrelevant, BUT I am not you and you are not me. I will go ahead and be the fabulous me today, even if you choose to hang around”
My name is Jen, I coach women, and my focus is on supporting women to be their best, most authentic selves. Book a time to talk with me Contact – Finding Her
