How we overcome shame, is we own our story

In April, I shared with you about the launch of my private six-month coaching group called Living As If You Matter. This group is all about living as if you truly matter, or as Brené Brown would put it, wholehearted living. Today I want to talk about what gets in the way of living more wholeheartedly or living as if you matter, and the antidote to it.

In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown explains that the biggest thing that gets in the way of us living more fully as our true selves, or living as if we really matter, is something that we all experience – shame. Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough. It’s the feeling that makes us want to hide or run away. It’s what sometimes makes us overreact in certain situations. According to Brené Brown, “Shame is basically the fear of being unlovable… Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.”

Given that we are social creatures who are wired for love, belonging, and connection, feeling shame can be intensely painful, and living in shame can be detrimental to our overall wellbeing. And yet, all of us experience shame. The only people who do not experience shame, are those who lack the capacity for empathy and emotional connection – i.e., psychopaths. The res of us, have all had moments where we experienced shame. Shame is not only reserved for those of us who have walked through trauma or abuse.

However, if you grew up in a dysfunctional home, or with a lot of trauma, your experiences of shame could be so deeply entrenched, that you start living as if you are unworthy of love, belonging, and connection most of the time. What I discovered with shock and surprise a few years ago, was that underneath the anger I always felt, was shame and a deep sense of unworthiness. I was feeling anger, because it was easier to feel anger, than to let myself feel the shame that was underneath the anger. If you are wondering, it’s more painful to experience shame than anger, because shame vibrates at an even lower frequency than anger, and of course anger tends to be more acceptable in some circles. Shame is considered not acceptable. So, most people do their best to hide their shame, because they believe that if they shared that they were feeling shame, they would be judged even more.

According to Brené Brown the total opposite of shame, is to own our story and feel worthy. Shame keeps worthiness away, convincing us that owning our story will lead to people thinking less of us. Shame is all about the fear that if people were to hear our true story of who we are, where we come from, what we believe, or how much we are struggling, or believe it or not, how wonderful we are when we are soaring, that they will not like us or won’t want anything to do with us. So, often when we feel shame, we want to hide our story.

I want to share an experience of this that happened three years ago. Three years ago, I was invited by someone to share my story on her podcast. For some reason, I was very hesitant to do the podcast interview. My coach encouraged me to do the interview and to share my story. However, it was during the interview that I changed my mind and told the woman that I would prefer not to continue, and I requested that she not share my story. In that moment I felt so much shame and I didn’t have the insight that I have now about what was happening for me at the time.

Something that Brené Brown shares in The Gifts of Imperfection, is that not everyone has earned the right to hear our story, and when I look back on that experience, that is exactly what had happened during that podcast interview. I was invited to tell my story. I shared my authentic story. It was raw for me. It was a story I hadn’t shared before, and because the podcast interviewer didn’t know me and we didn’t have a pre-existing relationship, she wasn’t able to hold space for my story. I did not feel understood in that moment. And suddenly, I was awash with shame, and didn’t want my story to be shared, because I didn’t want anyone to hear the real story.

Now fast-forward three years, and I share my most vulnerable story with the women in the Living As If You Matter group, and the story creates the space that has each of the women feel safe enough to show up fully, and share their stories with courage and vulnerability. It took me three years to be able to share my story without collapsing into the story. It took me three years to fully own my story and feel no shame about my story. It took me three years to courageously tell my story to those who had truly earned the right to hear it.

About two years ago, my coach had said to me that I couldn’t keep running away from my story or disowning whole parts of myself. And she invited me to read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This book tore me open and forced me to start reclaiming parts of my story that I had run away from for so many years. It started with this book.

In between there was some deep coaching, and then living through the hardest year in my business in 2023. I was doing deep impactful work, getting praised by my clients, and not making any money, and I really had to look at my money story, and my stories about self-worth and value. 2023 was also the year I was encouraged by three of my coaches to start looking at my own trauma, and how it was impacting my ability to fully show up to my life. It was the year I got into nervous system regulation work. It was the year I joined Adult Children for Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families (ACA). It was the year I finally faced the stories I was telling myself about my own worthiness and lovability. It was the year, I started owning my story.

Now you might wonder why it’s so important to own your story? Our stories DO NOT define us, but they do give people a glimpse into who we are and the path we have walked. When we disown our story, we give it power over us to make us feel shame. When we hide from our stories, we believe that our stories define us. However, when we can reclaim our story, and have compassion for the younger version of ourselves, that lived through the experiences we are now ashamed of, we reclaim our right to choose what version of the story we want to tell.

In her powerful and thought-provoking TED Talk, Caroline Myss, offers that we have one of three options when we tell our stories. We can tell a story of suffering and victimhood. Or we can tell a story of overcoming; of how we used the difficult experiences and challenges in our lives to learn and grow. We can either make ourselves the villain or the hero of our own story. Lastly, we have the option to tell a story of thriving.

To tell a story of thriving, we first need to own our own victimhood and judgements, and we need to be willing to take ownership of our choices and experiences. We need to be willing to learn from our past mistakes and failures. We need to be willing to share our shame, and forgive ourselves. We need to be willing to let go of the belief that our past defines us. Your past does not define you. It’s simply where you started. And we all start somewhere. It doesn’t really matter where you start. It only matters that you use everything on your journey for your own healing and growth.

Before I started my work with my coach five years ago, I was absolutely living a victim story. I was angry at myself and at the world. I was blaming everyone and everything outside of myself for my misery. I was at war with myself, and I lived in constant shame and fear that people will discover that I’m essentially broken and unlovable. My coach was the first person who accepted me unconditionally, and invited me to consider how I might be making myself the victim of my own story.

Only once I was willing to share the shame and the pain, and once I was willing to show myself some compassion, did things begin to shift. Today, I see how my life experiences – even the most difficult and painful ones – have served me and have helped me become the person I am today. And even more so, I now embrace difficult and challenging experiences as a part of life, without seeing them as a punishment. As I mentioned above, last year was a really challenging year for me financially, and yet, in all other areas of my life, 2023 was also a year of such incredible growth, healing, and learning. And the Living As If You Matter private coaching group, was a spiritual download that came as a result of the pain I walked through last year.

I’m reminded of what Shirzad Chamine says about difficult experiences. He says that there are always one of three gifts in any painful or difficult experience, if we are willing to see the gift. To be able to see the gift, we need to own the pain without turning it into personal suffering. When I believe that life is happening to me, I make myself the victim of my circumstances. However, when I believe that life is happening for me, I can take ownership of my response to life in the moments when things are not going the way I had hoped, or when I am faced with pain and struggle.

The three gifts are:

1. The gift of learning. What is this experience teaching me? Or what have I learned, or do I need to learn from this experience?
2. The gift of growth. How is this experience helping me grow, heal, or become the person I want to be? How is this experience possibly wanting me to stretch outside of my comfort zone?
3. The gift of inspiration. What inspiration do I take from having walked through this experience? What’s my message or my longing for others? How can I use this horrible experience in service to myself or others?

My pain and trauma have given me all three these gifts over and over. I have learnt so much about the human condition, about what we have in common as human beings, about longings and desires, about emotions, patterns of behaviour, about courage and resilience and so much more.

My trauma has also helped me become the person I am today. I firmly believe that I could not do the work I do in the world, had I not walked through the experiences I have walked through. These experiences have helped me become more loving, more forgiving, more compassionate, more tolerant, more patient, more expansive. I have learnt how to hold space for people when they are in pain. People often tell me that I have a level of depth that is remarkable. This was not always the case. I cultivated this depth through working through my own pain and trauma.

In 2023, when I finally faced some the trauma that I had been in denial about, and when I embraced the lessons Life wanted me to learn about money, about trust, about worthiness, I found the inspiration to create the Living As If You Matter group. I know this group would never have existed had I not walked through all I had walked through in 2023 and even before that. It was truly a gift of inspiration that I would never have created on my own.

So, dear reader, if you find yourself currently walking through a really difficult and dark period of your life, know that even though you might not be seeing it right now, this is happening FOR you. I want to invite you to share your shame with someone who has earned the right to hear your story. Reclaim your story, and own it. It is yours. And it tells you where you started. My sense is that if you stop judging your story for a second, you will see how much you have grown from where you started. You will see your own evolution through the years and how you are very different from who you were when your story begun.

You are loved. You are worthy. And the story that you tell yourself that evokes shame inside, is a lie. It’s not the truth of who you are, because you are far more than your mind, your thoughts, or the stories you tell yourself. You are a profound miracle of life. You are a spec of stardust. You are the oceans and the blue skies. You are the trees in the forest. You are LIFE. And that is not shameful. It’s wonderful.