Shame is that silent cringe that ties your power up in a knot. It is that crippling energy that dampens the pleasures of life.

We’ve all had moments of shame, maybe you said something mean in a heated moment,  maybe you didn’t honor a commitment you made, or maybe something just happened that you felt responsible for and it didn’t go well.

Of course, there is healthy shame, which is the awareness that you’ve done something, that if given the opportunity to do it again you’d do it differently. Healthy shame creates the opportunity to learn and grow from our mistakes. But, there is also an unhealthy shame, which stems from the belief that we must be held in a prison of paralysis and be punished for our badness.

If you’ve found yourself in the grips of shame, healthy or unhealthy, give yourself the opportunity to heal, to learn and to grow. Shame is a challenging energy, but it also reaps rewards when you’re able to evolve through it.

 

5 Simple Self Care Steps to Heal Shame

1. Body Awareness

When the silent undercurrent of shame creeps in, it may be so subtle you don’t even realize you’ve just tightened up and shut down your power.  In other cases shame burns through your whole system like a fire rod of discomfort. Either way, it is a sensation that needs to be identified and brought into conscious awareness. To care for yourself when you’re in the grips of shame, you must first be able to recognize that you’re in it.

What is your body feeling when you feel shame?

 

2. Listen to your body

Once you have created body awareness you’ve already done yourself a huge service by setting the stage for deeper listening.  Ask your body when it has ever felt this way before and see if you can harvest the first or worst time you felt these shame sensations in your body. Even though you may be doing these ‘5 Simple Self Care Steps to Heal Shame’ for a current situation, most likely it is triggering a body memory from a previous experience that will need to be healed in order to liberate the current situation.

When was the first or worst time you felt these shame sensations in your body? Describe the most potent memory you have in as much detail as possible.

 

3. Parent Yourself

When you bring forth the body memory of your original shame imprint you have the opportunity to process it. Most likely you didn’t know how to process it at the time, so your body said something like this: “I don’t know how to deal with this, so I’ll tuck it away for now to protect you. When similar things happen in the future I’ll bring it up to see if you’re ready to process it, otherwise we will keep it frozen until you’re ready.”

Now that you’ve brought this shame memory forward you can un-numb it, and explore ways to parent yourself through it.

What did you need then that you can give yourself now?

For example: Did you need someone to love you, hold you, teach you, offer kind wisdom, or show you another way of doing things. Let yourself listen to your deeper wisdom to discover what you needed and explore ways you can give that to yourself now.

 

4. Current Situation

Processing the original shame imprint frees you up to face your current challenges with a clean slate. Now that you’ve received self-parenting for your original shame imprint, bring yourself back to your current situation.

What is currently happening that makes you feel ashamed?

 

5. Evolved Action

With your new wisdom and self-parenting skills, practice applying this wisdom and self-parenting to your current situation. What do you need now to support your healing and transformation?  When it comes to shame, it is an energy just like anything else. Healing it is about alchemizing it.  To alchemize something, is to take a lower frequency energy and evolve it to a higher expression.

What evolved action can you take now to transform shame into empowered wisdom?

For example: Do you need to apologize, do you need to be kind to yourself, do you need to forgive yourself, do you need to process anger, do you need to learn new skills, etc…

Give yourself the opportunity to learn from shame and let it fuel your empowered wisdom!

 

Did you find these steps helpful?
Is there anything else you do to heal shame?
I’d love to hear about it. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Empower a friend, you never know who deeply needs healing at this exact moment.
Share the ‘5 Simple Self-Care Steps to Heal Shame’ and be a catalyst for great change in our world!