"We cannot grow if we are ashamed, and we cannot be ashamed to change ourselves or others." ~ Brené Brown
"I don't deserve to be happy."
"I will never be good enough."
"I am not worthy of love."
Does this seem familiar to you?
I keep hearing sentences like this in my work that help women to get a divorce. I heard it for years when I worked in the Ministry of Women. And it echoes back to me from my own experience. I have gone through many broken stories of numerous aching souls.
These sentences are all limited to one core emotion: shame.
Throughout my life I was all too familiar with this emotion. I spent almost seventeen years in a devastating marriage, had multiple miscarriages, was diagnosed with cancer, had a cancer hysterectomy, almost lost my mind, and had a mild heart attack from all the stress. In addition, my mother committed suicide – she shot herself in the head.
And then I got divorced in conflict. It was so expensive, my fortune sank and I had very little left.
I was a single mother and had to decide whether I would return to the company and never see my children because the price of working in the company was unspoken (more than eighty hours a week – a high price) ). So I went to countless interviews and couldn't find a job because even though I was a leader who had managed multi-million dollar initiatives and people around the world, I didn't have this magical piece of paper – a degree that made people think I was smart enough.
As long as I can remember, I bought the lie that I was not enough, and I believed that I deserved abuse, pain, and grief. I was ashamed of breathing most of my life. I apologized for everything – for the disapproval of other people, for the wrong mix of words, for my whole being. I thought I deserved any bad experience thanks to my previous conditioning.
We humans are good at collecting shame within us. Victims of trauma and abuse experience an enormous amount of toxic shame, and if this is not your story, you have probably internalized feelings of unworthiness when you shame messages that you received from parents, teachers, and peers in your early years.
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Belief in unworthiness therefore often stems from childhood if you have an increased susceptibility to shame, which either results from a hard self-critical inner dialogue, the degradation of efforts, achievements or ideas or for physical, sexual reasons. or emotional abuse.
Good or bad experiences trigger a neuronal burning in the brain. Over time, repetitive neural circuits, especially when accompanied by emotional intensity, form our usual responses to experiences. In other words, the more we deal with certain thoughts and behaviors, the more vulnerable we become to those thoughts. Every state of mind can become reality through reinforcement.
So if our childhood efforts to be loved met negative reactions, our brain structure would respond with the development of patterns that reinforce our feeling of unworthiness. We would be conditioned to perceive everything through a pubic filter.
If we look at ourselves through such a filter, we are tempted to hide for fear of exposure. We become a kind of chameleon that adapts to identities that others impose on us.
We then live in a constant state of struggle or flight; From a physio-biological / physio-neurological point of view, so much cortisol pumps through the body that the brain becomes foggy and you experience fatigue, frustration, fear and illness (which turns into illness). Your adrenals work overtime.
When we hide like this because of our shame, we tend to separate, isolate, and hide. We create a kind of protective insulation.
When my children were young, like most children, they were afraid of the dark. As a new parent, I tried all of the techniques to get rid of the "monster" they were afraid of to go to sleep. I tried a night light and even filled a spray bottle with water, claiming it was "monster deterrence" and sprayed her room to supposedly keep the monsters away.
It was stupid of me to play this game with them; young as they were, they were too smart to fall for.
So I finally sat down and said, "Look. Here's the deal … When you see a monster, it comes to you for a reason. The next time he comes to your room, instead of being scared, greet him and say, "Hey man, what's up?" Then feel free to go downstairs and share cookies and milk with your new monster friend. "
My son was so excited. He couldn't wait to see the monster so he could bring it down for cookies.
Every morning he woke up and said, "Mom, I tried to stay awake all night, but the monster never came …" Because he was no longer afraid, he slept all night.
Combating shame is something like that. It starts by pulling back the curtain, becoming real and raw, and looking it straight in the face. If you take it outside, it will lose its power over you. If you bring it into the light, you can deconstruct it, recalibrate it, reconstruct your story, and reappear.
There are permanent changes in your basic belief system that can be updated. The term “plasticity” refers to this ability to change the brain. That is, it is possible to turn the script around and engage in new empowering thoughts and behaviors. So transformation happens through confrontation with restrictive beliefs that you have built about yourself and identities that others have given you.
You can literally rewire the pubic memory with new experiences of empathy and inner compassion.
You can free yourself from shame. And your story can become a catalyst. You can use your loss to serve others like I did. But first you have to have your power, and that starts with changing your mindset, especially if you have a victim mentality like me.
When I was deep in the pit, I had a friend who said, "You don't wear this look well." I was burning with shame, but it was true. I had allowed myself to become a victim who focused on how unfair life was for me.
So I started taking stock of my life and began to practice gratitude. Before my feet fall on the floor in the morning, I sit gratefully. I am grateful that my customers allow me to help them walk in complex situations and they trust me to guide them. I am grateful for the chance to slow down and catch my breath.
The power of choice is the only thing that separates us from all animals on the planet. You can choose joy, love and gratitude at any time. Or you can choose anger, resentment and fainting.
Does this mean that you have no challenges? Absolutely not. You will get the challenges you need to accomplish your purpose.
When I started to be obsessed with gratitude, my life began to change, and so can yours.
Anger and fainting generate negative energy that attracts more negative energy. When you become grateful, you immediately move things into your energy that you can become more grateful for. The sooner I get grateful, the better I feel. Gratitude is a healing energy.
Of course, I needed much more than gratitude to free myself from the shame, especially the shame that was imposed on me. My transformation was the result of a change in mentality, understanding emotions, and changing habits. From everything I've learned, we have to give up the story of not being enough. We are enough We have to bring your shame to light. We can create a new set of rules for you.
Listen, when you awaken a person, you awaken generations and there is a tectonic shift and no one is the same. A dark room cannot remain dark when a bright light comes in.
It is scary to bring shame to light, but as soon as you step into a newly discovered freedom, you learn who you are outside of the identities that everyone else has given you and become completely yourself. The worthy, deserved , more than enough you that you have always been
About Hilary Porta
Hilary Porta, known as a life architect, generational converter and top successful trainer, helps people to push their deepest limits with brain-based strategies. Hilary has had a successful career as a corporate strategist and has been deeply involved in neuroscience, neurolinguistic programming, cognitive behavior, occupational psychology, metaphysical anatomy and advanced PSYCH-K® over the past decade. She is the founder of R3 International, Inc. and CEO of H. Porta Coaching, a leading transformation company. Read more about Hilary here.
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