09/19/2024
SHAME IS A PORTAL TO INNOCENCE
Shame... one of the heaviest, most uncomfortable, most damaging feelings we can have.
Shame is what exists at the root of attachment trauma, also known as developmental trauma or CPTSD.
“We view shame as an act of rejecting and hating oneself. Self-rejection and self-hatred emerge out of a child experiencing themselves as bad, defective, unloveable. Children blame themselves for environmental failure, even when it is completely irrational from an adult perspective. A child truly believes that they deserve the bad thing that happened to them.”
- Laurence Heller & Brad Kammer in ‘The practical guide for Healing Developmental Trauma’
Whilst this kind of description lends itself to the notion of horribly oppressed children… the reality is that a ‘bad thing’ for a child can simply be a perceived experience of neglect.
Being left to cry it out night after night in a room apart from your parents, no matter how loving they actually are, is a bad thing to a child.
We don’t necessarily need to go into story, and we definitely don’t need to try and reach for a story to cling to in explanation for why we feel the way we do right now.
What we do need to acknowledge though is that if we have consistent relationship difficulties that we have come to recognise as insecure attachment, then we are carrying at least some degree of attachment trauma in our system.
If relationships are a struggle because of the triggers that constantly surface.
Anxiety. Avoidance. Suspicion. Jealousy. Control. Possessiveness. Walls. Freeze. Fawning. Rage. Etc.
Then our nervous system is carrying trauma.
And the root of that trauma is bound in a distorted self-conception.
i.e. shame.
I have come to conceptualise shame as a form of density in the body.
Like a mass of sticky black fluid sitting inside of us.
When we encounter situations in our life that activate this shame… for example when we receive criticism, or suspicion, or we perceive the potential for abandonment like they flirt with someone else, or whatever else that activates our attachment difficulties… this shame is activated, and once activated it will always lash out in defence.
Fights tend to occur through the activation of this deep unconscious shame, the attempt to protect it and the construct created around it that allows us to feel at least “ok” as an adult.
Unconsciously a fight is two people trying to create space for their shame to not be compressed.
And sadly a fight inadvertently creates more compression as each person fights for the space to unwind their own tight feelings.
In order to heal shame, space is needed.
We need to create the space in ourselves and in our relationships for this sticky, black density to unwind.
As intentional space is created, as it is seen and heard and felt and validated the black density stretches, gradually becoming more viscous, more light, more wispy… eventually it becomes gaseous and finally, with enough space and time and love and patience… it dissipates completely.
What is left when shame is given space, is light.
The light of the Self.
The unique self that we innately, inherently are at our deepest core is always beautiful.
Always innocent.
Shame is simply a distortion of this self, of this innocence.
And when we release shame, we regain innocence.
Not a naive innocence… rather, an innocence that is in awe and wonder at the beauty of existence.
Can you imagine a world where we all felt this innocence once again?
~Damien Bohler
Artist: Unknown
