There is nothing more emotionally devastating than the weight shame has on our lives.  The desperation of hiding our shame fuels most of our controller’s behaviors keeping us from our rest and inner peace.  Shame drives much of our futility which keeps us stuck and spinning on our most purposeful goals.  Shame encourages our worst fears to spin around in our minds repeatedly as we wait for bad things to happen, things we unconsciously believe we deserve.  Shame has a devastating impact on our lives, but when we start to dig deep to the source of the shame, we can make the realization that it holds no credibility.  Shame is simply a bunch of lies.  Through our traumatic experiences, it has gained a tremendous hold on our lives despite our deep desire to shine.  In our healing journey, our goal is to break that hold by understanding where the shame started.

Projection.  The most prominent reason shame exists is projection.  The same lies have been told through generations within our families to squelch our gifts and dampen our dreams.  These shame messages were developed to protect us from the rejection, exile and even death associated with a lack of acceptance in society.  As a family, shaming ourselves became the lesser of the evils in our attempts to stay alive.  These messages were ingrained in our unconscious and used to internally suppress purposeful potential, but the unconscious messages were also projected onto the next generation.  If the shame messages were suppressing our inner children, those same messages would suppress our external children too.  We would have been told anything to stop us from exploring who we are.  “Our talents are unnecessary.  Our gifts are dangerous.  Our emotional expression causes problems.  Our goals are unrealistic.  Our plans are ridiculous.  Something is inherently wrong with us.”  There was never anything wrong with us though.  It is a bunch of lies created to avoid rejection many years (or even centuries) ago.  Shame projection from one generation to the next is a major reason we struggle to move forward in the world.  We are all stuck conforming to old threats, rules and laws which no longer apply.

The Evidence.  Once we believe the shame, we start collecting the evidence.  At first, it is the messages from the family on repeat.  Soon, we start to look for that evidence in our other relationships with teachers, bosses, friends and partners.  Once we believe the shame, our actions will reflect those beliefs so we can recreate what we believe to be true.  If we have an experience which does not support the shamed beliefs, we will reject it as a fluke or a lie.  Why do we stick to our shame beliefs so closely?  If we don’t, we will have to grieve.  We will have to grieve the time lost in those beliefs.  We will have to grieve the false stories about how we were treated.  We will have to face the reality that we didn’t have the control we thought we had.  Believe it or not, in childhood, the shame kept us from falling into total despair.  If we believed it was our fault, we could believe there was something we could do about it.  Recognizing how we were not in control means facing the reality.  Facing the reality means grief.

Contracts.  Most of our beliefs come from contracts with our abusers.  I am not suggesting that contracts are signed pieces of paper (although they can be).  They are more like deals we make with others.  As children in traumatic households, those deals are never fair.  At the foundational level, they will attack our ability to be authentic.  There will be contracts about speaking our truth, expressing how we feel, exploring our gifts, even how successful we are allowed to be.  These contracts will be held in place with shame.  We will be blamed for something we didn’t do so it can be held against us.  We will be to be “saved” by someone so we feel like we owe them forever.  We will be forced to do something awful so it can be used against us too.  These shame-based contracts are highly effective.  It can take years of healing work to realize how our inner parts are holding on to the shame-based lies and the futility of those contracts.  It can be done though, and it will positively impact generations to come.

Fear of Punishment.  Our shame-based contracts also trigger a deep fear of punishment.  If we are inherently bad, the universe and its people are not on our side.  This is often proven to us during a difficult childhood as we are collecting our evidence.  Our inner parts, especially the karma kid who holds the contracts, will be deeply afraid of the punishment of breaking through the lies and the contracts they support.  They will correlate unrelated and unfortunate events to our attempts to be more authentic.  They might see a flat tire or a bad grade as a punishment for who we are.  If someone rejects us, it is a punishment.  If we struggle financially, it is a punishment.  This belief creates a strong reaction to life’s difficulties.  This keeps us stuck in the half-life our unconscious trauma encourages.

How do we break free of these lies of shame?  I promise it is possible.  We must see how our systems have been brainwashed.  When we see ourselves stopping short of what we want, these are the gateway moments to our shame lies.  The most important thing we can do is shine a light on what lives in the unconscious.  Talk about it with others.  Write down the lies in first person.  I call this resistance writing.  Repeating this writing helps us release the lies and move forward.  Prepare for the backlash whenever you break a pattern or cycle or set a boundary.  The backlash comes from the fear of punishment.  Inner defenders are terrified of what you will face if you keep empowering yourself.  When it comes, write from the backlash.  If we expect it, it doesn’t take us down in the same way.  Keep reminding yourself that our most important steps in life will come with resistance.  Contrary to mainstream beliefs, our purpose is not easy.  It is where we will face the most inner resistance.  Keep going and surround yourself with people who do not believe the lies either (not likely to be family).  You can change your patterns for good.  The truth will in fact, set you free.