Have you tried unsuccessfully to heal your shame? Have you done a lot of work on yourself and you still often feel that you are not good enough? No matter how badly you currently feel about yourself, you can heal your shame and feel excited about your life. Discover the secret to healing shame.
Hi everyone. This is dr. Margaret Paul with the Inner Bonding podcast. I'm sorry if my voice gets a little hoarse today. Well, I'm in Colorado and we got fires and we are just full of smoke. So it is having a bit of an effect on my voice. So today I want to talk about how to heal your Shame. I work with many clients who have tried for years to Heal Shame and I still haven't been able to do that. So I think this is a really good topic because you can't heal your Shame.
So she Shame is the feeling that there's something basically intrinsically wrong with you. The feeling of guilt is about doing something wrong, but shame is about being wrong at the core of you. And the feeling of shame comes from a big false belief. Like I'm basically flawed or inadequate or wrong or bad, or on important or undeserving, or I'm just not good enough. Now for many of us, at some early point in our lives, we absorbed this false belief that caused the feeling of Shame.
And we absorbed it as a result of not being seen, being loved, being valued, being understood by our parents or other, other caregivers. And as a result, we develop the belief that we weren't being loved because there was something wrong with us. We were too little to realize at that time that our parents, you know, they were, they felt their own shame. They were projecting their shame on us to us.
They just didn't know how to give us what we needed. And they were doing the best they could coming from their own Shame. But we definitely absorbed, you know, what, what they were saying to us or how they were treating us for how they were treating themselves. Now, some children are taught outright that they're not OK. You know, that they're bad are dumb or stupid or undeserving. Other children concluded that there was something wrong with him, by the way that they were treated.
That that's what happened with many of us. Think about how often you've said to yourself, things like I have no value. I'm not good enough. I don't like myself. Where if really, if people really knew me, they wouldn't like me, or I don't deserve to be loving to myself. I'm just not that I'm not important. I'm not, I don't have value. I hear this over and over from my clients. So Shame comes from two different places.
One is other shaming ass and the other is shaming ourselves. Now, first I want to talk about the shame that comes from others. With an example of one of my clients, and I'm going to call her Tori, not her real name. Of course, as a child, Tori was abused in a lot of ways by her father, her father used to tell her that, that she was ugly, that she shouldn't have been born, that she was garbage. He would hit her with a belt for, and like No no reason, no, no provocation.
And he often touched her inappropriately. So of course she grew up believing that she had no value. She was being objectified by her father all the time. And when children are objectified, of course, they assume that they have no value when parents and teachers and siblings or other children Shame are ridicule or a tote or a bully, or a physically or sexually abused a child, the child absorbs the Shame of the perpetrator.
And they don't realize that it's not their Shame. They don't realize that they're absorbing the shame of the perpetrator, that they have no way of knowing that they're innocent, pure, innocent children of God, whatever God is for you. And they don't have any way of knowing that the abusers are the ones that are wrong about them, that they grew up believing that they are just worthless.
I don't know of anyone who grew up never being shamed in some way.
And like I said, we then absorb this and we shame ourselves. So when Torre started to work with me, she'd been shaming herself for years. She didn't realize at this point in her life that she was the one causing herself to feel so badly about herself, she would Shame herself and then project herself, judgments onto others and believe that they felt the way about her, that she felt about herself.
Her ego wound itself was completely in charge. And she had absorbed the false beliefs handed down to her from her abusive father and her withdrawn mother. Now, when Tori came to see me, she was really tired of feeling badly about herself. She was ready to learn to Heal or Shame, but first Tory needed to acknowledge what had really happened to her in her childhood.
I cannot tell you how often the people I work with trivialized and diminish what happened to them as they were growing up. They'll say things like, Oh, it wasn't that bad. I'm sure people had a much worse than me, not trivializing and diminishing. What happened to you is self abusive. It's like if an actual child came to you and tells you of being abused or being bullied, and instead of taking it seriously, you say, well, I don't believe you, or you're lying to, or it's not a big deal or get a grip, get over it.
This is what Tori was doing. When her inner child started to tell her what life was like for her as a child, she wasn't believing herself. So I helped Torre to acknowledge how lonely and helpless and heartbroken. She felt everyday as a child, Tori started to cry for the first time in years, feeling seen and heard by her own inner adult. Her child then told her more and more about the events that caused so much deep pain as she was growing up.
So Torre was enabled to see where the judgmental voice in her head had come from. Pretty soon, Torre was able to connect her bad feelings about herself with their own self judgements. She learned to immediately feel the Shame and insecurity. She caused herself every time she blamed in judge yourself, she was making that connection inside and, and she learned to open to her higher self for the truth of who she really is.
The more aware she became of the connection between feeling worthless and her blaming and shaming thoughts toward herself, the easier time she had letting go of her program, false beliefs about herself. She started to treat herself as the sweet and kind and caring person that she is fortunately to Ari became very devoted to her Inner Bonding practice.
And within a few months, she was feeling so much happier. In fact, she was able to stop smoking something that she had tried to do over and over before learning how to love herself. She's making new friends and beginning to do the creative and fun things she's always wanted to do. Torre is feeling alive and passionate about her life. Now, I want to talk about an underlying issue regarding Shame that needs to be addressed to heal your Shame.
Because for our ego wound itself, Shame actually serves an important purpose. Once we establish our core Shame belief that we're not good enough, we become addicted to it because it serves us into primary ways. One way it serves us is it gives us a feeling of control over other people's feelings and behavior. As long as you can believe that your, the cause of other people rejecting you, then you can continue to believe that there's something you can do about.
It gives us a sense of power to believe that other people are rejecting us are behaving in unloving ways because of our inadequacy be there's something wrong with us, because if it's our fault, then maybe we can do something about changing ourselves. We can learn to do things right, and act, right? And so we hang on to the belief that our inadequacy is causing others behavior, because we don't want to accept that others have the freewill to feel and behave any way they want.
We don't want to accept that we are helpless over others, feelings and behavior. Now, some people even use their Shame as a way of controlling their concept of God. Sometimes I hear my clients say, God, isn't going to be here for me because I'm not good enough. So essentially they're saying I'm in control of whether God is unconditionally loving my work or a lack of it determines whether the spirit of unconditional love is here for me.
Now that's a lot of arrogance of the ego wound itself to think that we're in charge of the unconditional love of the universe. Now, another way that our Shame serves us is it protects us from other feelings that were, that we don't want to feel we're afraid to feel. And so shaming ourselves curves up those feelings and gives us a feeling of control over our own feelings.
Now, interestingly as bad as Shame and he feel many people prefer it to the deeper feelings of the deeper core existential, painful feelings of life, loneliness, grief, heartbreak, sorrow, helplessness, over others. Shame can cover these over just as anger, maybe a cover up for these painful feelings. So can Shame. Now shame is a totally different feeling than loneliness or grief or helplessness over others, because shame is a feeling word causing by our own false beliefs.
And by how we treat ourselves while feelings of loneliness and grief and heartbreak and sorrow, and help us over others are existential feelings, which means they're are feelings that are a natural result of life. We feel grief and heartbreak over losing someone we love. We feel lonely when we want to connect with someone or play with someone. And there's no one around who who's available to connect with her play with, or share love with, or people who are around are not available.
Many people would rather feel the awful feeling that they're causing than feel the authentic, painful feelings of Life.
So if you're finding it difficult to move beyond your shame - to Heal your shame, it’s because you are addicted to the feeling of control, that your shame based false beliefs give you the illusion of control over others, feelings and behavior, and covering over your own authentic, deeper, painful feelings. So as long as having this control is more important to you, you're not going to let go of your core. Shame false Beliefs.
You are going to be able to heal from your Shame. When you are willing to make these two choices. One is that you're willing to accept that other's feelings and behavior have nothing to do with you. We become addicted to Shame, as I said, because it protects us from the truth that we really have no control over others or over whatever your concept of God is. We can't make other people love us. We can certainly have some influence over a whether people like us or approve of us, or sometimes how they treat us, but we don't have control over their feelings.
We don't have any actual control over them.
If we operate from the false belief that our best feelings come from others loving us and giving us what our parents didn't, we're going to try and have control over getting this. So until you know that your best feelings come from loving yourself, giving yourself the love you need and sharing your love with others. You are going to continue to try getting others to love you. You're going to continue to try having control over them. And the only way you can, as to believe that the there's something wrong with you, and if you fix it, then you can have that control.
When you accept that others have the freewill to be open or closed, to be loving her and loving that you are not the cause of their feelings and behavior, and you no longer take others' behavior personally, then you're not going to have a need to control them. When you let go of your need to control others, and instead open to compassion for yourself and for others, then you're going to be willing to let go of your false beliefs about yourself that are causing your feelings of shame.
So until you give up your illusion of control over others and over your concept of, of, of God that you can control God, you're never going to understand what you do have control over, which is your own choices and your own intention, personal power, which is knowing what we do have control over and taking action eludes us until we accept that we're helpless over other people and over spirit over God, whatever your concept is, the paradox is that we can't move into our personal power until we accept our powerlessness over externals, over people, over things, over
events, over everything about ourselves.
Now, the other choice you need to be willing to make is that you're willing to feel your authentic, painful feelings, rather than cover them up with anger or shaming yourself. So when you learn to nurture yourself by being present with caring and compassion for your own painful existential feelings, you'll no longer have a need to protect against these feelings with blaming or shaming yourself or blaming others, even.
So Shame is actually simple to heal, but it's not necessarily easy. Your Shame will actually vanish when you have the courage to feel your loneliness. When someone was hard, as close to you, rather than attempting to control feeling the depth of that loneliness by deciding that it's your fault that the other is close to new to you, you have the courage to feel an accept your helplessness over whether someone opens or closes his or her heart to you.
You are willing to take responsibility for compassionately managing with spirits, help the help of your guidance and the help of others, your feelings of loneliness and heartbreak and helplessness. And you gratefully accept this opportunity to evolve your soul, practicing Inner Bonding and learning to lovely lovingly, manage your feelings of loneliness with others and helplessness over others and a heartbreak.
And all these painful feelings of life is the key to healing your core Shame until you are willing to feel these feelings, instead of protect against them, you may continue to use your Shame as a form of control. So I hope you can begin to see that shame and control are, are intricately tied up together. It's not always easy to understand this concept so you can listen to this over and over. I hope you begin to understand this concept as you learn and practice Inner Bonding, you're going to, Discover
the beauty of you.
When you give up your attachment to control and instead choose compassion towards yourself and others, you are going to find your Shame disappearing, giving up attachment to control as a result of practicing Inner Bonding takes a deeply devoted Inner Bonding practice to eventually let go of control. But this is what opens the door to discovering how wonderful you are in your soul. So I'm gonna tell you about another client.
I'm going to call her Maddie and Maddie had been practicing Inner Bonding for about 18 months. She had attended a number of my intensives and was now sitting with me in an advanced intensive man. He had been doing really well, staying connected with herself and with her guidance. And it felt times that peace and joy that she had never felt before. But now, and this is the reason she came to this intensive. Suddenly all her progress seemed to be gone.
Mattie was back in her hole in her old addiction of trying to control a man. She and Eric had recently connected in a way that she had not connected with someone before, but after only a couple of months, it seemed to her that Eric was pulling away. She found herself obsessing about him and being unable to sleep when she didn't hear from him.
So I said, Maddie, what made you fall for Eric? She said, he thought I was wonderful. I felt seen and cherish like never before. So I said to her, what are you not seeing or cherishing about yourself? What are you telling herself that makes you feel that you're not wonderful?
The answer was not immediately apparent to Maddie. Maddie had done a lot of work on herself and she had been valuing herself like never before, which is why she was so perplexed by her obsessive thinking about Eric. So after searching around inside, and finally going to her higher guidance, she got in touch with what she'd been saying to herself. Wow. She said, I didn't realize that I've been telling myself that I will never get what I want because I don't deserve it.
I will never be good enough to get what I really want. So no wonder Eric seeing her and cherishing her and felt like mana from heaven on a deep unconscious level, Maddie was almost constantly shaming herself and blaming herself. Whenever anything went wrong, her inner child felt anything but seen and cherished by her. I don't get this. She said, “I know I'm a good person, so I don't get why I still feel this way.”
So I said, “Maddie, do you ever feel a deep gratitude for your soul, for the good kind, caring, compassionate, creative, loving soul that you are?” Maddie looks surprised. “I never thought a feeling grateful for my soul. Now that you say it I've often felt extremely grateful for my kids, but never for the child in me for my own soul.”
So I said, “Maddie, can you find a place in you that feels grateful, that place that feels grateful for your children and bring that same feeling to your inner child?” “Yes, I can!” Mattie said, “I can do that!”
“How do you feel when you do that?” I asked,
“I feel just wonderful. Just as good, if not better as when Eric thinks I'm wonderful.” That evening Maddie and Eric had a close and connected conversation the best in a long time, it was obvious to Maddie that because she'd been abandoning herself and making Eric responsible for a sense of worth, he'd been feeling pulled out. He'd been feeling engulfed by her, by her pole and had pulled away as a result of seeing and cherishing her own soul, feeling deep gratitude for the beauty that she is and no longer judging and shaming herself, Maddie was no longer pulling on Eric to give her what she had not been giving to herself.
You might want to try right now to open, to learning with your higher self. You can imagine an older, wiser self about who you really are in your soul and move into your heart with deep gratitude for the beauty that you are. So if you can feel the profound privilege, it is to be able to see and value and take loving care for the beautiful soul within you.
This is your true self. This is your individual expression of the divine, a spark of the divine. That is who you really are. Notice the fullness you feel within when you own and cherish who you truly are. So I hope those of you that don't know Inner, Bonding come to Inner bonding.com and download our free seven day course.
And we have many, many wonderful courses, many ways of learning. Inner Bonding you have many books about Inner Bonding I have my 30 day love yourself course, which will teach you in a more in depth way. I do now, online workshops just finished one, which was wonderful and online intensives, many, many ways of healing learning to heal yourself and deepen, learn, or deepen your experience of Inner.
Bonding it's such a profound process. I want to encourage you to learn it and bring it into your life so that it becomes your way of being that it becomes a daily practice to be connected with yourself. Bringing love to yourself, connecting with your higher self and being guided by your source of love and truth, rather than by the way, the program false beliefs of your wound itself.
God bless you.