Full of shame I am for details nobody cares about. Almost everyone feels a shame for something. And often about details, nobody else notices. For example, I still don’t look like the perfect woman I visualized and affirmed years ago. But will there be someone who’s ever thinking about that, except me?
Easily I walk around naked at the beach and into the sea. I don’t feel ashamed. Because everybody is actually naked and all we dress up with is cover up, make-able and interchangeable, except your own naked body.
Who made me believe I had to be ashamed for anything anyhow? Shame is a very uncomfortable and annoying feeling that can show up at any moment. I am a fast thinker with a creative mind and a tattler, calling deviating blurbs, not always receiving an understanding response.
But there’s no reason for shame, because I do what I can and know quite sure that most of my life I’ve been doing the best I can. Well, at high school I didn’t very well, because I was totally bored by the nonsense we had to learn. But I’ve been working heard all my life and I still do.
So why the shame?
Where does this uncomfortable shame come from? Or shyness that bothers us from such young age? We read it in the bible, Adam and Eve, the fall out of paradise. And in Anderson’s The emperor’s new clothes, an absorbing fairy tale about shame and acting as if. Is the shame sitting in our DNA and if so, how did that happen? Are we tinkered including emotions, by which we do make or keep ourselves smaller?
And that affirming and visualizing of a body that looks different than the one I have? How weird is it that I want to have a different body than the one I have, while I am super healthy and have a strong body, perferctly and all included? I hear it so often in my daily practice. And I’ve been raised with it.
My mother curls her hair since she was 12 years old, because to her opinion straight hair isn’t good enough. She always checks the weather, because rain is bad for her curly hair. and I have straight hair, so she kept it short. “You looked so cute with short hair.” That’s true, I have the photos. But when I was about 10 I wanted long hair and got 2 full tales. I still have straight hair and it’s a lot. there’s nothing wrong with it, when you don’t care about curls. My mother went on diets, while she was not fat. My older sister as well and so did I. And when I see the photo below I really don’t understand why.
“I was looking at a photo of myself 10 years ago and wanted to look like then, when I remembered that at that time of the photo I also wanted to look like 10 years earlier.”
(participant in training)
Since I was 4 years old I was into gymnastics. I loved to hang upside down in the rings or made handstands and cartwheels on and on. I never had any complains about my physical condition and still am limber, even if I don’t try to. On the photo above I’m 15 and now I remember that in those days I already had all kinds of judgements about my body. I hated my glasses and thought I had a big butt. For years I’ve tried to change that. Never tried to change the judgement, but the physical body. Which is totally impossible!
Shame creates loneliness
Shame isolates and makes you feel lonely. When I believe there’s something wrong with me, I exclude myself. Than I think I don’t fit in. Than I isolate myself. Sometimes I don’t even realise I’m doing it, because I believe they are doing it to me: the others, the outer world.
And with all the divide-and-conquer going on in the world this is exactly what I should not do. And neither should you. Especially not now.
Do you sometimes escape from this uncomfortable feeling? Do you distract yourself with candies, wine, watching TV, YouTube, eating, diversion, anaesthesia? And do you feel ashamed afterwards for yourself, your behaviour, your laziness, your weakness or your much too visible body?
Right now the mutual division comes raw to the surface. There’s division amongst family members, friends, parents and children, partners, collegaues, neighbours and strangers on the streets.
While people need each other badly. We cannot live without each other and that’s why we can’t stand isolation, even when we organise it ourselves. Shame is old and it sits deep.
Let it go
But how different would your life be when you wouldn’t feel a shame for being fat? When you could tell your neighbor that your child is on drugs? Imagine that you could tell your business club pals that you don’t succeed? Or that someone doesn’t want you anymore? And that everybody may know that you have financial worries? Or that you actually don’t know it?
How nice when you dare to tell someone what’s bothering you. And you can connect with each other, even though there are differences. How nice when you don’t have to hide your sadness, guild or anger! Because as long as we put it away, distract or numb ourselves we don’t solve anything.
To let go of something you first have to see it, hold it, look at it. Do you know what you are hiding? Do you want to connect with others again? Don’t wait for the other, but make the first step.
Maybe I can help you? Make an appoint for a free session, where you can ask me anything.
Or check out my online training My imperfect body. This training is meant for people, who NEVER want to diet again – something you should not want, because it is super unhealthy – and who don’t want to suffer in the gym.
