The Destructive Power of Shame: The Truth About Shame
Like every toxic relationship, shame has been working overtime to control your life and leave you empty. Shame doesn’t want to draw attention to the truth of its presence. Shame doesn’t want you to know it either leaves you empty within, empty without, or both at the same time. The truth about shame is this: […]
The Destructive Power of Shame: Yielding to Shame
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 […]
The Destructive Power of Shame: Overcompensating For Shame
Overcompensating for Shame with “I don’t like myself.” If you’re like some people, shame may trigger in you the desire to hyperfocus and overcompensate to prove you have it together, and you go to work like a “bad ass and do bad ass shit.” And you get good at that! As another successful day is […]
The Destructive Power of Shame: Shame and Negative Self-Talk
Shame whispers one of two (or both) core statements in your ear every day, from the time you get up from another restless night of barely any sleep at all (and when you do sleep, you haven’t gotten any rest): “I don’t matter.” “I don’t like myself.” “I don’t matter” and “I don’t like myself” […]
The Destructive Power of Shame: Dealing with Shame by Externalizing Shame
Shame can be difficult to release from our identity. Shame exists with several cognitive distortions (negative thoughts with a funhouse mirror version of reality). The cognitive distortions of shame include “All or Nothing” (either all of this or none of that), “Disqualifying the positive,” (nothing good counts because of something bad), “Emotional Reasoning” (I feel […]
The Destructive Power of Shame: Our Secrets Keep Us Sick
You may have heard the saying “Our secrets keep us sick.” It’s absolutely true: The things we stuff, bottle, avoid, and keep a secret, becomes acidic and eats at us from the inside out. Here’s an example of what that looks like: When I was a child, my parents bought a home, helped in part […]