Silence is the currency of Shame

How many of you, when starting to feel that heat arise in their soul, and their stomach turn acidic, want to bury their face when feeling shame?

What do we do as a normal, knee-jerk reaction?
We are SILENT, we withdraw, and we turn away.
Some of us become more of_______________; more of a perfectionist, create more chaos, procrastinate more. We inflate what fuels our comfort level in spite of it often being dysfunctional. We need to keep ourselves in constant motion so we don’t feel the searing heat of that shame. Remember that phrase: “Dancing as fast as I can?” That’s what we do when that shame trigger gets touched. And, no one but us can see it…that’s the beauty of it besides the real bonus is that we get to see something in live time that we can actually work on to heal.

Whose needs get met by our silence? Only the monsters in the closet, only the fears that were created when we were very young that came from not be allowed to be separate, to be truly ourselves.

We were born, for the most part, into families where our own parents were still four years old emotionally themselves, and battered about by older siblings, who saw us as competition for the grand prize:
Our parent’s affection and attention.

Our old, cemented fears require a lot of patience, compassion and awareness in order to heal. The on going battle between our projections, which sometimes feel like monkey chatter and our grounded adult wisdom, lessens as we keep identifying exactly what is underneath the shame: FEAR of abandonment. That is how we felt when we were three, and our egos were not crystallized enough to push back that what was imposed upon us. Shame was DONE to us, given to us, placed upon us like a bathrobe…it’s the ‘gift’ that keeps on giving if you don’t understand what it is and where it came from.