I feel ashamed (dealing with shame and guilt)
I feel ashamed
The pervading energy of guilt and shame surround me this week. Twice this week I have heard my self say “I feel so ashamed of…..”.
Once it was an issue around my body, and the other time it was around my having to reach out for help in an area of my life which I thought I “should” ‘have it all sorted’!
I had two sessions of body work over the last fortnight ….and it’s been a while since I’ve been on the table, so I imagine with this loosening of the energy body, and the fascia and everything else that goes on with powerful bodywork, I have come to this place of deepening into, and understanding another layer of …..shame.
It’s intense
Shame and Guilt are powerful emotions. And I know, and some of you may have heard me speak of, what comes of these emotions. Ultimately shame helps us understand accountability and spirituality, and guilt ultimately teaches us about our sense of value. However, feeling ashamed, and feeling guilty, are powerful, pervading, freezing, overwhelming feelings for most of us, and its challenging to remember this in the midst of a shame and guilt flood!
Earlier today, as I sat in my garden with tears streaming down my face, and really experiencing the shame and guilt that were generally sitting within me, I could hear the voice of a counsellor I have seen many times before, come into my head and say ….FEEL IT ….. FEEL IT …..
I deepened into absolutely feeling the shame and the guilt. I dropped right into this well of shame and guilt within me. This was emotional, and powerful. I felt the shame and guilt begin to leave my body, through my tears, through my breath, through my thoughts and energy, it was transforming, moving, leaving me.
It was leaving me, not because I wanted it to be gone, but because I went to it, and embraced it, and accepted it. I allowed the shame and the guilt of me to be there and I dived into it, like a pool of deep water. But like a dream, it was there and then it wasn’t, it became something else. It became neutral, it became satisfied. Their collective hunt for my attention was over.
Recognising the more subtle emotions is challenging. The other, not-so-subtle emotions, are a little easier to spot. Anger is forceful and obvious, jealousy and pain, equally so. Joy and lust capture our attention for other reasons, they are big, obvious and usually welcomed into our world! However, shame, guilt, and fear for me have been more challenging to catch, to recognise, and therefore, to understand.
For me, fear often hides behind procrastination, disorganisation, and lack of commitment. But that is another article in itself! Shame and Guilt, because of their very nature, tend to hide away, and settle in the dark places, unseen, unknown, hard to recognise. Undermining and dismissive, covert and slippery. Yet at the same time, gripping us until we understand accountability, and our true sense of worth.
