4 Ways To Keep Shame From Stealing Your Happiness

From the moment we're born (and even from conception) we're programmed and limited by the relentless experience of shame. Whether that's experiencing it directly from others, or by witnessing and experiencing our parents shaming themselves (or each other). As babies, we're born as highly sensitive beings, thus we pick up on all the energy and unconscious beliefs of our parents, society, and the culture we're born into.

As such, none of us really escape the crippling impact of shame in our lives whether we are aware of it or not. And that shame drowns and smothers our self-esteem — becoming the foundation from which all our other beliefs, neurosis and psychoses stem from.

How shame impacts us

In my years as a counselor and working with thousands of individuals, I've noticed that the primal wounding that holds every client back is always centered around some deep rooted shame and a resulting belief that "something is wrong with me," " I'm not okay," " I'm not safe," "I'm not worthy," or "I'm not loveable enough." 

Identifying this particular core point of pain with ANY client is always a big breakthrough. When they're willing to feel that pain to its core and examine it directly, often a tremendous amount of life force unleashes ... restoring vitality and a more profound sense of well-being and "all-rightness."

However, more often than not, we just don't feel safe enough to experience this old trauma; we fear that facing it may overwhelm us and we might lose our mind or lose control, spiraling further downwards into deeper levels of self-loathing and self-hatred. The mind comes in to protect us from going any further, fearing it may lose grip on what sanity it thinks it has left.

Because of this our mind pushes away any shameful emotions, often burying and hiding them deep within the subconscious where they keep tripping us up time and time again — acting themselves out, and replaying the old record or story out in various forms and guises. This leaves us viewing life through a warped lens based on shame and sinfulness, rather than through the true view of love and innocence.

Can you see the vast difference in these two ways of perceiving life?

One is from the primal wound and belief in separation, in which the shame of existence is first experienced and triggers a need to keep disconnecting, dislocating, dissociating and disembodying further and further out from ourselves. Mostly, because it doesn't feel safe to exist in our own bodies and when you can't be in your own body you can't really feel — you can't feel love, you can't relax and just be — you never feel that you're enough just as you are.

Whereas the other way of viewing, sees, knows, and feels the wholeness that we are. So, as a result, our whole perception shifts and the shame of existence resolves.

Returning back to this wholesome condition is what every heart longs for, because that's where love lives within us, as the one heart that unifies in our pure existence of innocence. This clears up any "existential crisis" when you return to the innocence and beauty of your true nature.

A sense of shame cannot exist in the power of such presence, and now you can finally embody feeling safe, in order to come back into your body where all the love is and restore everything that ever felt unlovable, isolated, lost, or alienated back to wholeness, innocence and love. Then you're not only realizing the love you are and knew as a baby, but you're also grounding that love in and through you, returning the world home where everything belongs, feels safe and secure. Making everything and everyone feel safe and secure with you.

When you see through the misidentification as a separate self — opening into and fully embodying your being or true self, where you have sought separation through — you are home and therefore, become a powerful vehicle to bring the shame of the entire world home in such loving presence.

It's a radical love, and such love includes: embracing and lovingly enfolding all aspects of shame, along with all of our points of pain back to the love they are in truth. At the cellular level you become liberated from all that hurt and lifted into a new vision, which allows the neurons to rewire and fire in new ways.

Not only does this harmonize and integrate any disharmony, but it has a quantum impact on our entire energy system; especially on our neurobiology where the old neurode patterns, (in Greek 'neurode' means wound) which create our neurosis. This process allows them to finally collapse and new neural pathways are woven back into the web of the functioning whole, where we are no longer viewing ourselves as separate but as one whole, complete in all totality.

Bonnie Badanoch in her groundbreaking book, Being A Brainwise Therapist weaves the latest research into psychology, mindfulness, neuroscience and the far reaching consequences it has on our neurobiology; which is changing and evolving the way counselors and therapists work with their clients. Bruce Lipton, amongst others working in this field and in his book The Biology of Belief, also goes into the latest scientific studies of neuroplasticity and how shifting subconscious beliefs allow the neurons to rewire in new ways, changing our perception of ourselves and the world around us.

This is great, that the latest scientific research and quantum physics is backing up what the ancients always knew and what anyone who has "realized life" is alert to. Self-realization and the complete embracing of ones true nature doesn't just shift beliefs, but actually blasts through the entire belief creating a new mechanism altogether. Ultimately, freeing up your neurobiology and returning the mind to sanity, but it also unleashes the vital force of life once held down from the shame of existence and separation — freeing you into the all-inclusive — where any shameful and painful aspects are no longer excluded or hidden away in the darkness, but are graciously received, enfolded, felt innocently in the arms of love once more; it's felt in the one heart you now and have always belonged to.

You now feel safe no matter what thoughts or emotions arise within you, or whatever challenges come your way. In the innocence and security of your own sweet belonging, they can finally belong to.

So how do you self-realize, opening into such radical self-acceptance and freedom in the first place?

1. Keep it super simple.

2. Master your mind by deciding to self-realize, affirm this clearly to yourself. You are telling your mind and subconscious to become alert (aware) and that you are in charge now.

3. You take charge of the mind by being mindful and shifting its focus of attention back onto you, whenever you become aware to do so. You have the ultimate choice to refocus, notice yourself and sense yourself. Sense into your existence right here and right now, affirm "I exist," "I'm alive." "I am here," "I am life." Stay very present to yourself whenever you are able to. It doesn't matter if your attention goes out, because at times it will and that's okay. Keep it simple and simply bring it back whenever you become aware that it's slipping away.

4. Sense into your body. What does it feel like inside? What do the sensations feel like and what does really being here feel like? Using mindfulness, refocus and put your attention and awareness onto and into the body, feel into the cells and the life force within. Keep, noticing that you are here and purely alive.

Feel into you feeling yourself feeling, noticing yourself feeling and sense what it is like just to feel and to simply be. This simple act of presence, or staying present to yourself has a quantum impact that may go unnoticed by you, as it may appear subtly.

Eventually, it takes care of everything and you will start to sense the well being thrumming underneath, it's the goodness and wellness of being, and of existing as existence itself. You are finally coming home and realizing you had never left in the first place!

If this resonates with you and to discover more; visit: www.embodiedrealization.com or www.janehunter.org