Emotions can be teachers for us to stay true to who we are or who we want to be. Think for a moment about the last time you felt shame. Where does that feeling come from? Did you think or believe that if you hid, your shame would disappear and no one would notice? Maybe you felt like you were flawed.

Wherever your shame comes from, I see a common thread associated with feeling shame. That gnawing feeling that you ignored the sound, inner direction your intuition offered. Maybe you did something and immediately knew that you could have done it differently. Did you recognize that feeling as shame? I think it’s more present in my library of emotions than I’d care to admit. What makes us so averse to feeling shame and naming it?

I think as human beings we want to believe we are good; that we make good choices and we care about others. When our actions paint a different picture, shame comes marching in to make us aware that we’re straying from what we know is ‘right.’ Our subconscious parents and teachers step in to point out our ‘flaw’ and we want to run and hide. If we hide, then what we did somehow isn’t as ‘bad’ as it sounds. Oh, there are hundreds of different ways to keep from naming our shame.

Shame is not a dirty word! I think it serves a purpose we overlook. When we understand we feel shame, an abundance of new possibilities opens up for us. What if shame is teaching us to make different choices? If we stop to listen to shame, perhaps we can harness the choices that hold true to our belief that we are good and we care about others. It’s like a guard-rail keeping us on the path we want for ourselves. There’s a creative idea. I wonder how many more meaningful connections we’d experience if we respected the boundary shame naturally creates for us.

Go ahead. Give yourself permission to recognize when you’re feeling shame. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person; it means we can ground ourselves in the confines of self respect and respect for others. There is freedom in recognizing shame and adjusting our thoughts and actions to support who we want to be.

Our feels give us platforms to learn and change…

Explore more feelings in the Stayin’ in Touch – Negative Emotions book. You can play with them when or wherever you like.

Image by Сергей Корчанов from Pixabay