Toxic Shame

Another theme that kept coming up for me, was shame. My aunt came to visit, right as I was breaking up with the avoidant. Her and I always have heart to hearts, and it was the first thing she recognized. She kept telling me I had shame; I had no self-compassion. A long running feedback loop I’d get was “you’re so hard on yourself”. I heard this nearly my whole life. Turns out there is a high connection between shame and lacking self-compassion. Again, not feeling good enough. I started reading about it, listening to podcasts, and reading books. Sure enough, that’s absolutely what it was. I was always ashamed of myself for not being the absolute best. I felt I WAS bad. A lot of my anxieties and insecurities would rear their ugly heads. I was doing all the things. Cold showers. Grounding. Meditating. Something was just wrong with me, I knew it. Shame. It’s funny, that was something my ex-husband would retort with when he thought someone did something wrong. He’d just look at them and say “Shame”. I’d been the receiver of that comment many times. Breaking away from him, I thought those feelings would go away. They didn’t. It wasn’t until I finally started doing the actual work. I was going through the “work” motions for years. I didn’t start doing the real work until much later. Observing your thoughts and just letting them come and go helped immensely. You are not your thoughts, thank God! Your mind is just trying to make sense of everything going on around it.

I started talking to myself the same way I would a good friend. Girl, look at you! You walked away from abuse; you made it out. You’re off anxiety meds, you’re doing the work! You’ve lost over 50lbs so far. You’ve been promoted twice! You’re raising a teen boy on your own. You have so many supportive people in your life. And you’re healing!

How could you ever feel less than awesome?