9 Random Examples of Shame from PTSD & CPTSD

so shame is an everpresent emotion within us and is usually the least understood in terms of our mental health our triggers even how we think we often think when we're triggered or we're stuck we might you might have a realization sometimes that's like this is just who I am right and it most likely isn't just who you are if you grew up in childhood trauma or relate to having PTSD or cptsd shame somewhere along in your history like mine really got amped up to the point that we're so used to it and Society is also

pretty slow to understand things like shame so it's not just you struggling with it if we can understand shame as a basic human emotion as well as how shame gets like Turned Up and Amplified in an abusive family system which is what my work is about as an educator on childhood trauma we can connect the dots and be less ruled by a lot of unnecessary intense shame that we experience and it's really freeing to not be ruled by shame and shame can be Elusive and really normalized again like in society and with ourselves to the

point that we don't intimately know it is shame but we suffer from the lack of psycho education about it which is what the video is about and I'd like you to consider to leave a comment right now about what you think is one of your biggest sources of shame or shame issues or how you get triggered to shame in the reaction and kind of see if that what you're describing is going to pop up on this list later you're probably also going to be helping somebody by naming the shame and leaving the comment so I

think it would be great if we could just get by with much less shame like feel a healthy amount of Shame about accidentally leaving some trash at a campsite or something and not go to a shame hole or feel like we're a terrible person or that we're solely responsible for dooming the planet um that would be nice to just make it so much smaller to not wake up in the middle of the night convinced that we're going to get fired because we set a cringey bad pun at a work meeting that day if you to

that you'll know what I mean so what is shame I believe shame is relevant to everything about our mental health attachment Styles people pleasing fight responses fond responses how we cope how we react shame is like the liquid of a soup it's like the broth in which our childhood trauma issues and and symptoms float around like little alphabet pastas and I I know I totally just dated myself there here's what I mean and I'll reframe this in terms of common trigger with cptsd from childhood trauma and yes this looks silly but just stay with me

shame is the undercurrent it's the vehicle it's the fuel to many of these issues here's what I mean we can say dissociate from making a social mistake like at a party or something and then our early shame pops up and says that we're an idiot for saying something wasn't really that funny in a group or something an intense shame reaction we can have an anxious preoccupied attachment style for not being loved or being seen by an aloof parent in our early shame says that we're not worthwhile we can be hypervigilant about being abandoned or being

made fun of or teased because we can't tolerate the earlier shame of those things to be happening again in the present raise your hand out there if you are highly prickly to feedback I'm not saying feedback is easy or a good time but it might be the most intense way you get triggered feedback is like marinating in this shame broth we can be depressed about not having the right career or a ability to manage the world or hit Milestones that others seem to be able to and an early family message of being defective is also

play in terms of our early shame we can have intense anxiety about not being good enough with our peers or in general and haven't yet connected that anxiety to the shame of say being neglected by an apathetic or unavailable parent or say we even had a golden child sibling and you got forgotten in that Golden Child kind of attention that they got so what I'm trying to say with the soup analogy is there's usually an undercurrent of shame in all of our issues and it's important to be able to really dial into that shame which

is going to be very helpful in your your journey of healing it here are some brief recap issues about shame here are some like shame mechanisms and Concepts to help further understand shame and again you might think you understand shame but most people don't really understand their Shame Shame versus guilt in my experience guilt is a gnawing feeling about being unable to remedy a situation or feeling like you're failing others somehow where shame automatically tells us we're inherently bad or a failure or not good enough childhood trauma coming from having abusive parents can involve what

I call direct and indirect shame direct shame is like we're being told that finger in our face you're a bad kid I can't believe you just did that you're bad in various ways where indirect shame can be about feeling embarrassed about something apparent does or their character or the type of house that you grew up in because it's chaotic or messy I did a video on this topic of direct and indirect shame that I'll put in the description for you another concept is full of shame or Shameless childhood trauma greatly influences our shame either acutely

elevating it or we can really repress it greatly both have unwanted consequences in our lives and social life and Intimacy in our functioning I think of this as a spectrum of either being hypers shame based with high anxiety or being a bit numb or Shameless which paradoxically is still operating from shame so it's like hypershame versus hypo shame being Shameless can look like a Vibe that's like no one will ever mess with me again and I'm never going to play the fool again kind of a thing from the fight response and that is more repressed

shame than everyone hates me in this meaning neurotic type of Shame one of my favorite Concepts to describe shame is shame being a fixed gravity thing and a good analogy about shame is that shame is the main human emotion that other emotions orbit around like the sun and the solar system it's the main entree to the emotional Buffet here for example you might feel intense shame if something sad happens to you but you quickly start to compare your situation that you're sad about to maybe someone who has it worse that's kind of a stuck thing

with childhood trauma the sadness that you're experiencing is in a fixed relationship to shame which which is like the sun in this analogy and it can't escape the orbit of shame or the Sun and being right-sized or embracing your own sadness is being judged by your shame another example of the orbit thing is curiosity you might be curious about doing some art or music or be curious about what might it be like to do a creative project and be a creative person but the shame which again is the sun in this analogy keeps that Curiosity

planet in a fixed locked orbit that that Curiosity can't fly off and explore itself so that's what I mean about gravity where other emotions and other things that we might want to do or experience is stuck in this fixed orbit with shame this fixed gravity moving on that shame can influence everything about us like our purchases to what we eat to our social life how we make our money what kind of sex life do we have what kind of sex do we like there can be shame undercurrents through all of that do you sometimes feel

bad about what you eat what you buy and this is one of those consistent thoughts that involve shs I should eat more organically I shouldn't like this kind of sex I should never call in sick ever I shouldn't buy these silly things it's like a daily undercurrent thing that we need to dial into moving on there's also shame in society rules we can view shame as a good like innate biological defense to be able to maintain our social status for our need to survive things go smoother socially in our lives if we're not doing shameful

or antisocial hurtful things where we're cast out of groups which is what we need to kind of survive healthy shame when it works keeps us from being cast out of society by doing extreme hurtful acts it would be cool if that's all that shame was like thinking about morality or being conscientious it would be great if our shame didn't go to such an acute and overwhelming over-the-top place and was just there to remind us to treat people the way that we wanted to be treated shame is also a big umbrella term it also means things

like being mortified being embarrassed feeling less than ridiculed indignity which I'll talk about later feeling humiliated feeling found out or exposed both from real situations or just things that we assume in our heads about how people might see us or how we might be being treated another shame based concept is when we have a very shame based parent this is a big piece to all of these issues is when we're being raised by a parent who has also marinated in shame their whole life where they react act deeply and intensely to what they perceive to

be mistakes or how things look like a neurotic shame based parent not in touch with their childhood trauma might freak out if you miss a day at school because missing things is a reflection upon the family and upon them and it's just something bad that they can't name is going to happen if you miss a day at school so now let's talk about what is the opposite of Shame um when I discuss shame i' like to add its opposite which I believe to be the word integrity whether we're 2 years old or 80 years old

I think that humans feel good if they're seen as having Integrity like it bothers us when we don't integrity and dignity can be taken away in childhood trauma if we envision the heartbreaking scenario of say a three-year-old toddler being screamed at because they had a bathroom accident really intense direct shame while it's slow around this idea of dignity and integrity I believe that people are parenting children these days more from the idea of protecting their children from being shamed too much mistakes are just mistakes and there's still love there healthy parenting is about when we

understand that children are already vulnerable to shame and our job is to protect them from experiencing too much shame too much shame is where the damage comes in that's like the analogy about screaming at a toddler for for having an accident that's the stuff that stays with us even if parenting is extremely triggering and extremely stressful but we still understand that we can't can't shame them too much we still need to bring a lot of love and acceptance there and I think that if we can help our kids maintain some power and some goodness and

see their Humanity that's like the shield that protects us from childhood trauma as we work on ourselves we kind of reclaim these ideas and have a good foundation that we're a good person and being a good person is to have some dignity to have some integrity and we have some power in being a good person we have goodness in being a good person we have our Humanity there where we're okay to like be human and make mistakes good enough healing I think is when we don't lose our power and we're able to have to maintain

our goodness we're able to maintain and see our own Humanity even if we make mistakes or something comes up that's a big difference so here are some real life examples of shame to help survivors become more familiar with how the emotion Works in us and manifests within us from the context of our childhood trauma these are like everyday real life examples of how shame reveals ourselves to us and keep thinking about how unnecessary or Intense or maybe a bit over the top these are I'm not judging you in that I'm just saying if you grew

up in childhood trauma you were most likely set up to struggle with shame in an intense and unnecessary way like I was so I'll briefly name how the issue can come from childhood trauma and I'll also try to give you an idea about what each example would look like if there was more healing taking place around the issue and I'm going to be listening these from less severe to more more severe number one is when we say oh you too and this is a light example of Shame where we're somewhere like an airport and we

interact with someone who works there and tells us have a good trip and we respond with you too it's pretty funny it's pretty Innocent but depending upon the severity of someone's shame based childhood trauma we can really persever on that funny little mistake why is it shame and it's pretty normal right it's definitely normal but mistakes or normal but excessive shame really turns that up and we walk away from that interaction really starting to feel terrible shame will manifest here by telling us that we're an idiot while we're walking away and it can be worse

if we tend to be unconsciously hypervigilant about trying to not be seen as an fup and not being seen like an F up is really a big one for childhood trauma survivors it was for me maybe I'm just more out with it now that I'm kind of like I embrace my f up qualities um after we say you to uh we might have a mini shame attack about something that is really just kind of a funny cliche our inner child can go to a place that I can't even pull off trying to seem like a

normal person and that's a really big intense shame based thought this shame example can come from your childhood as having a strategy of having to hide having to hide how we feel about ourselves having to hide what what goes on at home having to hide being told that we're a terrible kid so we can go into schools as little kids and try to just pretend to be perfect and then when something like a mistake like a simple innocent mistake like this comes up we can feel exposed and I can't even keep it together kind of

a thing healing the shame on a deeper level with this one can just being able to see the humor in making a mistake and feeling that you're terrible somehow healing is also going to allowing ourselves to Grace to Simply Being Human we can have magical thinking that we still need to be perfect and hide and that isn't a human experience so that's what I mean about the humanity number two related to that is Bomb jokes when we're trying to be visible or funny and that fails if I made a joke in a meeting and it

bombed I would experience a deep physical sensation of Shame like a shame attack and I would dissociate while hating myself for just taking the risk that I just took by telling a joke like my energy in my body would drop down to my feet and I would want to crawl into the woodwork to escape it's awful and the childhood trauma in this example could involve experiencing abuse where taking a risk inside your family like making a joke asking a question could get you attacked expressing yourself could have immense contempt aimed at you and your family

it can also be trying to be funny and be liked which is really a common thing for childhood trauma survivors and being funny isn't bad but we can really go into a shame hole when we want to be funny and it doesn't land with more healing around this one we again see our Humanity that some jokes are great some jokes bomb some are cringey but those don't have to require a shame spot viral about being a terrible person if we bomb that is really about our family and not about the present as a side note

some childhood trauma survivors this is super specific some childhood trauma survivors tell jokes or make references that no one really gets because they're so so specific and yes it could be a neurode Divergent issue but that's not what I'm referencing here there's a phenomenon of an inner child thing where we kind of tend to think that everyone has watched episode 7 season 4 of Doctor Who and we make jokes about it thinking everyone's going to kind of get that we don't really kind of assume kind of a thing but there's there's something going to going

on in it I think it could come from really neglect and not learning how to read others or not learning how to do lead-ins with people like have you seen Doctor Who are you a fan to our social conversation so the third one is taking it personally I'm an idiot I'm not an idiot so our childhood trauma shame can make us react to basic questions and situations it's like someone asked you a question at work and you bust out with I'm not an idiot you know or you feel that on the inside so like questions

can really feel like accusations or we overly read into them we'll overly assume judgment from others and react from shame which might take us down a shame hole for the overreaction of kind of getting fighty with somebody or we can stay angry and self-righteous as well it usually comes from a childhood of being the butt of jokes and the family behaving like the child is defective in some way or your family would talk about you behind your back or treat you like you needed special help when you actually didn't or you were judged simply for

being a child and not an adult so it's a highly common shame reaction for those who were scapegoated and things were extremely personal and as a side note the reverse in taking it personally is also the shame example where we always assume that we're wrong and someone asked us the same question one reaction could be I'm not an idiot the other reaction is oh my god I'm an idiot they found out shame influences our perception about what people are communicating to us we can greatly misinterpret questions and react from what the FD you mean by

that to profusely apologizing and both reactions are ruled by shame and incidently working on our childhood trauma will take care of lot of these shameful issues if we're really looking at how we lost our goodness in our family system but healing with this one what that might look like is that we're able to take questions and not take it person or go to such an apologetic place because again we've got this Foundation of knowing that we're a good person and we don't lose that moving on to number four is this idea that shame is contagious

those who struggle with shame can overly take on or overly feel the shame of others in uncomfortable situations let's just say you see someone publicly make a fool of themselves because they drank too much or someone at work was reprimanded for not showing up consistently we can resonate with such people like musical tuning forks and feel terrible for them and even feel terrible about ourselves somehow that's how Insidious shame can be this can get us into trouble in relationships with emotionally immature or narcissistic people we can overly feel for them in their mess and their

mistakes and like we resonate too much with their mess this one can come from growing up with a parent who was immature or would make a mess out of their life or somehow they might have been a tragic figure like nothing went right for them I'm not judging this is real or kind of you know self imposed by them and as children growing up with a tragic parent or immature parent we were really focused on them we were really we paid a lot of attention to them we might have even been absorbed in their mess

and the shame can come from as little kids we want to be able to help them we're not seeing them as immature we just want to help our parent who's a who's a hot mess but the shame might come from our inability to do that this one is also about not being protected as a child child from adult emotions and adult situations like I often say as kids many of us Knew Too Much when shame is healed in a good enough way with this one we can be sympathetic and empathetic for those struggling but energetically

we're boundaried and we don't have to take all of that kind of stuff on we're able to kind of let people be themselves there's no longer this gray area and we're safe in ourselves to know that we're not bad for not taking someone else's mess on what needs to get healed in this one and I'll talk about later is we can feel like we're cold or we're narcissistic for not taking on someone else's mess or shame based situations of others and not helping them number five is I can't be like them related to the last

one I think childhood trauma survivors most of our psychic energy about how we are in the world is about trying to not be like one or both of our parents you might feel intense shame if you say no to someone like in that last example if you had an uncaring or unempathic parent who was all about themselves you might feel intense shame if you forgot wallet at lunch and a friend covers you and that shame might be about having a parent who was entitled and took advantage of others and being taken care of by a

friend in that moment is intensely shaming or uncomfortable for you you might feel some shame if things get a little bit messy in your apartment or if you feel emotionally messy if you had a parent who struggled with things like hoarding or having extremely poor mental health so we can overly compensate in different ways to not seem like an abusive unempathic toxic parent we can overly feel for others for not wanting to seem like an aloof narcissistic abusive parent we can put a lot of energy into trying to not be a certain way in the

world which is childhood trauma based shame in these examples healing this one looks like embracing on a deep level that we're not our parents who behaved either shamelessly or had too much shame we've separated from them through doing some work and we know the difference of who we are as opposed to who they were or are I think with this one as kids we can feel like an accomplice to the parental dysfunction which creates a deep sense of shame in healing is about recognizing that we didn't ask to be part of any of that their

mess and the shame belongs to the parents who had the responsibility for it or their lives or what was going on not us as little kids this is especially true if you grew up with addicted parents or parents who struggled with mental health issues or mentally off parents so moving on to number six is what I'm calling pressured peers pressured peers is just what I'm creating ly calling for the shame of feeling like you're not as accomplished or up to speed in life as other people your age it's actually a great source of depression for

people we can feel intense ongoing shame to see people our age to be able to do things like buy a house have a career that's fulfilling be social in a way that they might want to be accomplished be skilled or even have kids so this can be and doesn't always have to be an issue with child of trauma it can be about societal pressure to kind of like hurry up and die or hurry up and age there's a thing in society that does that got to get the degree the house the spouse the kids the

career and then at 70 you can just chill although with childhood trauma based shame from cptsd there's a tendency to bloom later in life that I find which I think is actually better and I'm biased because I bloomed much later in life than my high school peers but the shame here is about situations such as not having a partnership when your peers have long since been in long-term relationships or married the shame here tells us that Society standards are benchmarks to our worthiness the benchmarks aren't shameful unto themselves but for survivors of childhood trauma intimacy

and careers or being in the world seamlessly like others can be is a complicated thing that we have to kind of work towards or do work around in a highly common childhood trauma issue is not wanting to have children for fear of harming them in the way that we were harmed or not feeling confident to be able to get them what they need that is both kind of a setup from our own childhood but I also think it's kind of a noble decision of protecting you're kind of protecting Society from the same old stuff which

is I believe to be Noble and I know this is a deep deep personal issue for people so I don't mean to kind of speak lightly to it or go too fast when this is healed we can accept and embrace late blooming or our choices in life and our decisions and it doesn't have to be such a heartbreaking comparison healing this can also look like doing some grief work around the time that we actually lost in bad relationships or the wrong careers or struggling with our mental health again we were set up to not be

on the level of our peers because of what happened to us as children and also due to all the energy we spent struggling with the trauma as we were going through adult life and and development the reverse of this issue is this also happens for childhood trauma survivors is that they approach all of those benchmarks with an intensity I have to do this this is what's going to make me worthy to have the house the spouse the kids the career but they're not present for any of it which is sort of like the opposite of

what I just described with this idea of pressured peers the benchmarks the career the house the kids they become evidence that we are defective and a toxic family can also be pointing that out to us when are you going to have kids when you going to do the thing can definitely parrot that narrative a great source again of depression is how we compare ourselves to our peers and I've done I've done everything late in my life compared to the people that I graduated high school with career relationships children and I think it's more enjoyable to

actually Bloom late and again I think a great big source of depression is how we compare ourselves to peers I've done everything late in my life compared to those who I graduated high school with I got to my career late my relationships late I got to have children late and I think it's more enjoyable to actually Bloom late to be more present when we are actually doing these things we want in life number seven is what I'm calling enough is enough traditional grip so I've been playing drums since I was 11 years old and for

most of my time most of my life I've had this shame ghost kind of following since I started playing about that I've never learned something called traditional grip traditional grip is in your left hand or your non-dominant hand actually you play the drum like this and your other hand plays like this it's like an old marching band kind of a thing I learned match grip which was kind of easier for me at the time and I never learn traditional grip I'm a decent drummer who doesn't need or want to play situations where traditional grip would

be really handy such as marching band or jazz or fast Fusion or anything like that um to my inner child for years there was this yeah you might be a recorded drummer and people might want to seek you out to have you play in their band but you never learn traditional grip so shame tells us that you might say be a badass accountant who uses spreadsheets or you're doing bookkeeping and you really know your but there's still this nagging feeling that's like yeah but you never learned how to do pivot tables this kind of really

this bummer kind of feeling that we're criticizing ourselves and therefore because you didn't learn pivot tables or traditional grip that you're a fraud at what you're doing the shame also makes good enough benchmarks movable you master pivot tables or if I mastered traditional grip there'd be some other impossible standard where shame might say yeah you learned pivot tables but you don't know how to code so not good enough or enough is enough is an exhausting form of Shame where you might be an amazing artist who thinks that they suck because they never learned how to

do watercolors even though you hate watercolors like that kind of a thing so where this comes from in childhood I think it comes from being raised by a highly critical or miserable parents who had off expectations or were full of Shame themselves you might have been taught that someone is always going to be better or greatness or Worth or being good enough is for other people not you guys like you'll never measure up the family or parent could have also sabotaged things because you or they didn't meet possible Olympic or Pure priz or Grammy based

kind of expectations like it's magical thinking and weird expectations kids can also come up with unreasonable expectations on themselves or tell themselves that they won't be loved or liked like their best friend is unless they learn how to do something that they can do the cartwheel or play whatever um and it can come from really watching who gets attention in school that we can have this part of Shame going on when this is healed you recognize that you don't need to learn traditional grip or pivot tables and you're able to embrace the gifts that you

have and to look at there's so much stuff that we compare and judge ourselves against it's lovely when all that kind of like washes away I've met many childhood trauma survivors who made great money at what they do but they expressed anxiety about not being at the top of their field only to discover that they're actually happy where they're at and it's just old self-imposed pressure from from childhood number eight is something that I called yes it's serious instead of taking things personally this shame example is about taking things too seriously a classic example I

give is when you're invited to a party and you need to bring the most perfect expensive or thoughtful thing and bringing anything less means that you're a terrible person so things can be very serious for you while being thoughtful and caring is really a good thing it's not great when it's coming from a place about shame or fear or control if you have a partner that's like let's just bring some chips and salsa and call it a day and that starts a fight that might be a clue for you this is nuanced and FYI but

I'm I'm talking about the marked need to cover your your bases so people don't think ill of you or think that you're an F up or a terrible person or that you don't look trashy in some way could be another kind of word with that the same thing with gifts it has to be a really thoughtful can't be phoned in gift and that can be like a lot of pressure why and yes it's nice to be able to give thoughtful gifts but it's is it coming from shame where you have to look a certain way

or cover or like you're preventing someone from judging or criticizing you in childhood this really come from growing up with a parent who took things way too seriously as well and had a lot of perfectionism and control to growing up and say shameful poverty or chaos and the shame there is where you are hiding and influenced by is about never wanting to look poor or look selfish or look uncaring or look thoughtless again it can also be about compensating so when this is healed you know life is so much easier and less intense when we

know our goodness is there no matter what and things are good enough no matter what even if we don't have the time to prepare an amazing side dish or a gift and we just bring a bottle of wine which is good enough again this is all nuan but I think you probably understand what I mean lastly number nine is I could never do that briefly I could never do that is a sharp thought or expression when an opportunity comes up to be more visible or take on a challenge or try to finally explore something in

you that you're maybe drawn to what I mean is an opport Unity comes up at work to present your work at a meeting and there's a intense reaction I could never do that an opportunity comes up when someone says you be good at selling cupcakes that you make or Market a service or thing that you do I could never accept money about that accepting money would be wrong it's wrong right could never do that an opportunity to take a dance class or sing at an open mic your roommate says you have a nice voice and

you should perform somewhere and there's oh I could never do that even though there might be your dream to do that shame tells us that being visible or wanting a bit of the spotlight is terribly wrong or grandiose it also convinces us that we'll make a fool out of ourselves so there's a lot going on with this one you might also have some grief or jealousy when you see others who can freely take up some of the spotlight without shame in our inner child can be intimidated by such people or feel like they're a bit

too showboy so we can also be judgy of those who have some Spotlight while we kind of want some of it as well where it could come from in childhood trauma is being raised in an incredibly shame family where the right thing to do is to let other people shine but wanting that for yourself is selfish and wrong abusive families can even police their children from being too extroverted or wanting to be funny or wanting to be entertaining like just normal kids stuff and it's like the family can beat you into humility which wrecks vulnerability

we can also be ridiculed by a family for wanting to share ourselves in some way children are naturally like look what I can do you know like cartwheels drawings whatever that's like a healthy developmental way to be seen and be mirrored in the world um we can learn from children doing that who haven't been abused so much by just simply showing their light you know and yes we can be introverted and shy and not want any of this kind of stuff or attention which is perfectly okay too this can also come from having a parent

demanding attention or demanding the spotlight from the world in a self-consumed and narcissistic way so it feels icky to kind of be be on this on the stage in some way it can also come from being compared to others un fairly like having a mother who gushes over your best friend growing up but never you so when this is healed we simply allow ourselves the vulnerability in being seen and embrace that we not only have the right to exist and take up space but there's also nothing narcissistic or shameful about wanting to share ourselves or

get some attention or even you know some compensation for our gifts or for our talents or for our interest and getting unstuck is so free being in this kind of Shame that's around shooting ourselves down so how to work on shame if you're interested in doing some work on shame pertaining to any of these issues I have a course called toxic shame and childhood trauma the course helps you identify and start to work on your inner child on working with childhood trauma based shame and situations that you experience growing up you can find a discount

code in the description to this video and also a link to the course right up here so I had some Runners up to this list so some examples I left out require their own own topic or video and they're also more obvious and maybe not so Random one is the shame about our bodies and sex that requires its own huge dedicated video another is about impostor syndrome but elements of some of that were covered in these other nine a big source of Shame is something that I call transparent frog there's really a frog in nature

that you could see through it and see its organs um and this one is about the shameful feeling about feeling extremely transparent in the world that everyone knows about about you and your defects and something like that and I discussed transparent frog in a video I called 11 oddly specific childhood trauma issues and I'll also have the link to that in the description of this video and lastly there's also regret attacks like it's 2 a.m. you're trying to sleep and your brain brings up that goofy thing you said in class 20 years ago and you

feel a shame surge I see that one about being as about hypervigilance popping up to keep us in an elevated place to make sure we don't do shameful things some final thoughts so trying to heal childhood trauma based shame keep thinking about the words Integrity goodness and power little children are very vulnerable to those things and that our wounds as survivors are often about our goodness being taken away or not being incouraged to have any power or to take any risk or simply be seen as a good kid it's a highly vulnerable thing to be

human and it's really tough to have those early experiences mess up our sort of present life based to shame and understanding our shame can take some reflective work next time you feel bad or you feel triggered ask yourself might it be related to shame here's some questions for you is your trigger about how you're being seen is your trigger about not Measuring Up is your trigger about being taken advantage of or feeling like you're being taken advantage of are you compensating to cover something up is your anxiety about not doing enough today all of our

triggers I think is going to have an undercurrent of shame to them in some way even if it's shame under rage shame under sadness shame under freak out we have to be able to name and nail shame in order to be able to heal from it healing will involve a lot of looking at how you were treated as a child and processing those relationships say with an abusive parent or neglectful parents and the healing comes from reclaiming our personhood reclaiming our integrity and our dignity our goodness our power our innocence as a child and break

down some longstanding toxic beliefs that we might had some new beliefs might be that um sharing ourselves is a good thing that we're human and hiding so much is kind of silly and gets us nowhere that other people are human too and it's often not about us when they trigger us that we can start to laugh things off authentically and not take the world so seriously or take ourselves so seriously that we're not bad for wanting what everyone else wants being noticed being loved being included and lastly and I know that this is nuanced for

many people but I think healing shame is going to involve accepting our personal timeline it's better to get to things late on your own timeline and on your own process to never get the things at all so I'd love to know your thoughts leave a comment if you strongly resonated with any of these and add what you might have felt was missing I think it would really be cool to have a discussion in that way and as always may you be filled with loving kindness may you be well may you be peaceful and at ease

and may you be joyous and I will see you next time [Music]