I have been studying shame. I think shame is mostly a useless emotion, but it can give us information. Shame is described as a deeply held belief that one is unworthy, unlovable, bad, wrong etc. There are many different kinds of shame such as religious shame or body shame. It is believed shame comes from messages we have received throughout our life either directly or indirectly. Have you overcome shame? How did you do that?
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6 responses to “What is your shame story?”
I can’t really think of a big shame story that has stayed with me. It’s usually more situational. And honestly, I don’t see shame as always being a bad thing. In the right amount, it can be helpful. Most of the time it’s just hindsight doing its thing.
The key for me is keeping it brief and specific. If it stays at “okay, lesson learned,” it’s useful. If it turns into a bigger story about who I am as a person, that’s when it stops helping. At that point, it’s no longer about a choice or a moment. It becomes about labeling myself, and labels don’t really encourage growth or self-reflection. They just make me more guarded or less willing to try again.
So I don’t think I’ve overcome shame so much as learned how to listen to it without letting it run the show.
@mamajoy I could see this. You seem like a pretty emotionally healthy person who does not have a lot of self limiting beliefs. Perhaps your past had more functionality or it didn’t and you worked hard on yourself. I deal with people every day who hold a lot of shame. I agree with what you said about usefulness of some emotions. I feel like it mostly applies to momentary guilt. I feel like shame is more a deeper feeling of unworthy that is not useful.
@Scarlett2 I feel like shame often begins in trauma, but over time it can become less about what happened and more about the weight someone continues to carry. In that way, shame can outlive the very thing that caused it.
Shame!!! When breaking up with a man friend, we argued. I wanted him out of my house. I was watering my grass and I squirted him, trying to get him to leave my property. He ran into my house. I chased him from room to room with 50 feet of hose and a power nozzle to squirt him with a stinging stream of water until he ran out of my house. At that moment, my housemate (Vivi) came out of her bedroom and asked what was happening. That is the moment I felt shame. I was embarrassed because I let my temper ruin almost everything in the house. Vivi helped me dry the carpets with the carpet cleaner and I had to replace most of my furniture. —— The other thing that made me feel shame was in a really bad divorce. I was not ashamed of myself for super gluing his dick to his thigh. I felt he deserved that. I was very angry. My soon to be ex-husband offered about the furniture we would divide. He said, “You can take what is right and I’ll make do with what is left.” I bought a chain saw!!! I cut everything in the house in half. I took the right side of everything and left him the left side. The waterbed was where I had the most fun. The bed frame was easy, but I cut the mattress with my strong scissors. Did I feel shame??? Yes. I was ashamed that I let my temper ruin every bit of furniture that we both could have used. I took my halves of the furniture to the dump. Then I moved on with my life and did not look back. It seems like both times I did something that made me feel shame, it was letting my hot temper do damage to things. But then, I bought new and started over with new beginnings. New furniture and a new start.
@ladybarbara sounds like you did what you needed to do at the time to survive!
@Scarlett2 I think it also was true that I needed to not have furniture from a past that I was moving on from. However, my new furniture was given away to neighbors when I moved to Arizona. All I brought with me was 4 Lazy Boy recliners and two dining room tables and upholstered dining room chairs. That set in motion Immortal Pirate giving his dining room table and chairs, and two big recliners to the woman next door who needed the furniture. Since she was trying to raise 3 children as a single mother, she needed the furniture that Immortal Pirate passed to her. My shame was erased in getting rid of old memories for a new future.