To yield to shame is to merely exist in life. One yields, or gives up and allows, the premise that shame cannot change and there isn’t anything that can be done about it. You may think “I feel like I’m going through the motions. I’m just existing, not really living.” Your energy is low, it’s hard to still be excited about joyful events, and depression symptoms are also making it difficult to feel connected to yourself, to loved ones, and to daily life. Isolation and exhaustion may be the daily norm.
Shame may be making you feel hopeless, powerless, and jumping to conclusions that the future is dim. Yielding to shame operates very powerfully, and destructively, within the realm of the cognitive distortion (negative thoughts with a funhouse mirror version of reality) of Emotional Reasoning: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” What feels true is the mental, emotional and physical exhaustion, depression, lack of personal value and self-worth, disconnection, and an emotionally numb experience that feels so unimaginably strong that we reason, “It must be true. Why else would I feel it so strong if it weren’t true? I don’t matter.”
The shame brain looks for all the evidence to reinforce that you don’t matter: People forget your birthday. They walk in front of you in line. No one asks you what you want or need. You constantly feel like you are in the background of your own life.
Yielding to shame, yet again, has us feeling
Stuck
Hopeless
Afraid
Malaise
Exasperated —
—With little hope to change anything. You feel like you’re doing the best you can but your best isn’t good enough. Or maybe you don’t even know how to give your best anymore. Or, maybe you’re drained from constantly giving and attempting your best, and you still feel like you can’t accomplish the things you want (like the laundry, which is piling ever higher). Shame wants you to win a value that you already possess by virtue of being a living human being on this planet. Yet, shame causes you to reason that you are never going to have happiness and never be valued or seen for who you truly are. “Another day and I don’t matter.”
To stay in control of your life, the voice of shame uses denial by minimizing your traits, characteristics, attributes, and relationships that have tremendous value. This contributes to you feeling distant, disconnected, and like your life has less value- because you are a part of the equation. There is an opportunity to make a commitment to not perpetuate stigma in your life with what you believe about yourself and how you speak to yourself. Yielding to shame is another form of self-harm, and I don’t think you want to truly want to harm yourself anymore. In this moment, you can begin to challenge the message of shame in your life, and replace it with self-empowerment, self-compassion, self-grace, and self-forgiveness. You also have the opportunity to choose who gets to be around you, because your circle is sacred. People earn the right to be in your circle.
When it comes to challenging upsetting thoughts like the voice of shame, remember these 3 Truths: 1) you are not your thoughts, you have thoughts. 2) Check the facts and be willing to change your mind. There is a lot of evidence to the contrary of shame’s all-or-nothing, overgeneralized and emotionally reasoned view of your existence. 3) Don’t believe everything you think. Your thoughts, even powerful thoughts coming from the voice of shame, are not your identity.
You are not the voice of shame, and yielding to shame will no longer be a part of your daily life. As always, working with a therapist and/or appropriate support group would be a powerful support to help you develop healing in this area.
