Hello Friends,

Shame as defined by Brene Brown: "Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefor unworthy of accepting and belonging. ... Shame creates feelings of fear, blame, and disconnection."

Shame tends to feel deserved—we’ve internalized the judgment.

Humiliation, on the other hand, usually feels unfair or imposed, like someone else is putting it on us and we don’t deserve it.

Guilt is more about behavior: “I did something wrong.” Shame goes deeper, “There’s something wrong with me.”

Embarrassment? It’s the awkward in moment when you leave the restroom with toilet paper stuck to your shoe, sure, but usually short-lived. We can laugh about it later, especially when we realize it happens to everyone and doesn’t stick.

Shame can easily trigger a person's sympathetic nervous system and creates a narrative not necessarily based in reality. Living in one's shame story eventually leads us to victimhood. And thus begins the viscous cycle of the hypersympathetic response. In the end, however, shame is usually on us.

And before you get defensive, hear me out...

Shame often stems from the home and institutions we grow up in. We may come to believe the narrative that there is something inherently wrong with me. As an adult, I may no longer buy this, but has your unconscious brain let go of it? Does your body believe it?

It becomes easy to blame one's state of being on someone or something else - because sometimes its legit. It can truly be that someone or something put this on you. But at some point, the condemnation we place on that person becomes the same condemnation we put on ourselves. We become our own limiting beliefs. We become the thing we can't stand about others.

Stage sixing the bad things that happened to you gives you an excuse not to deal with the current you. Dealing with the current you often means looking in the mirror and seeing what we really don't like or want to know about ourselves. That might mean that I'm not actually a nice person. I'm the judgyiest of all the judges. The most righteous of all. Or that I am the secret twin of the narcissist I like to point my finger at.

But the good news is, once you catch yourself in the mirror, you’ve already started breaking the spell. Because if you can laugh at the absurdity of it, you’ve loosened its grip. And maybe the next time shame tries to whisper, “You’re the problem,” you can wink back and say, “Thanks for your input, but I’m busy mapping my tailbone today."

Onwards, Amy

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Content is this email is for entertainment and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice or a replacement for therapy. This is, unapologetically, Amy’s soapbox. If something here struck a nerve, chances are you helped spark it—so own your part. The musings won’t last forever, but while they do, consider them an invitation to reflect, laugh, or squirm a little.