Several years ago I was having some issues mostly related to a post-menopausal lack of estrogen.

I’d had three UTIs in six months, not to mention a skin issue that had been plaguing me for well over a year, and which I picked at over and over again to the point that I needed to go on antibiotics.

My skin was dry and thinning. The dryness was creating an environment for “bad” bacteria to flourish.

The several times I went to Urgent Care, they were nothing but kind and compassionate, even when, in depths of shame and embarrassment, I was afraid to let them see what I had done to my legs (from scratching and picking) because I was so used to being met with disgust (first by my mother, then I took over).

They were honest and told me I was “this close” to developing a secondary infection that could kill me…and they were so very kind.

~~~

We’re less likely to seek help when we carry shame. Rather than responding with compassion, curiosity, and care for our experience, we are harsh and blame ourselves.

We can’t see the shame for what it is because we think shame is reserved for “truly bad people” who “deserve” to be ashamed.

Serial killers, psychopaths, abusers, pedophiles, fascists.

That’s why acknowledging shame is SO HARD and it’s why I am so passionate about the ​Shame School Community​.

When we see our suffering through an unshamed lens, we respond with compassion, curiosity, and care for ourselves and our experience. We no longer deny our humanity. We no longer blame ourselves.

And we are more likely to seek out (and truly receive!!) care.

~~~

Instead of treating myself as a pathetic loser who couldn’t control her picking issue, I received the compassionate help. I took my antibiotics, picked less, and healed more.

~~~

What others say about my work:

“One of the things I love about you and your continual centering of this is that my body and my spirit know having a place to speak about it is necessary to my emotional health. IMy need to speak about it is often seen as a problem or as disrespectful. But I think there’s something profound here – there’s extreme rupture in one of the places where my body and psyche will continue to want to repair. My parent refuses to acknowledge the rupture or be a part of actual repair. It feels like an open wound being carried with me everywhere. Your space is like a sort of emergency room or simply an area with a healer who will acknowledge the wound, change the bandages and patch me up for a while. There seems to be no full healing of this particular wound, and I think that’s okay. But I do think it requires consistent tending. Not poking or making worse or infecting. But consistent medicine and tending. It’s really a broken heart in many ways. I’m really grateful for you. Thank you.”

~~~

Many of us internalized shame before we could form sentences.

We spent much of our lives running away from it, not realizing it wasn't ours.

We just felt this pervasive…wrongness and badness about ourselves.

That’s what we were trying to escape from.

Shame is a well-travelled path. It’s been here since whatever organisms existed here on earth evolved into humans.

Shame, when it’s unconscious, chronic, and internalized, is debilitating and paralyzing. It makes us unfree.

We feel the face-burning sting; the curled-in, sunken posture; the stark feeling that we are not okay. We are not enough. We are bad. There is something truly and irrevocably wrong with us and there’s no coming back from it.

So of COURSE we hide.

Hiding shame inflicts an additional burden. We become unsafe to ourselves and others.

It’s a bond we share but rarely talk about. Instead we shroud it in desperate silence. Why is it so hard to talk about it? Why must it be hidden away?

What I have learned after a 15+ year personal masterclass on shame is that authenticity is shame’s casualty...and its antidote.

Talking about it out loud because helps us feel less frozen by it and less alone in it.

You can stop carrying it alone.

​Join the Shame School Community​

Much, much love,

Karen