Control and Shame

Control and Shame

Control and Shame

 

Sometimes when we are so concerned with controlling every aspect of our lives, the people in it and how things go. We’re actually dealing with deep shame that lives at the center of that control. We may think it’s just the way we are, it’s just that we like things to be a certain way and we expect a higher standard from people. All the while we are actually ashamed of who and how we are, and we use control as the mechanism to bypass feeling how we truly feel. Let me illustrate this point.

I was thinking back to my childhood and how an incident with receiving a Barbie doll caused me deep shame and how later, this shame was actually managed through the mechanism of control. I remembered that I hadn’t received the doll because my caregivers got it out of their own free will, but I received it because I manipulated them into it.

I was 7 at the time. I remember going grocery shopping with my family and seeing a doll I really, really wanted. Of course, my family was not going to stop and get it so I did what a lot of 7-year-olds do sometimes –  I threw a tantrum on the floor of the grocery store. Arms wailing, voice screeching and tears rolling down my face, I completely embarrassed my family! Those of you with little children may identify with this scene. Those of you who ever witnessed someone else’s child do this, have felt the embarrassment of the mother/father and felt your own judgments come up about their parenting style. It’s an eyesore!

I remember the drive back home being quiet as I successfully manipulated, or embarrassed, my family into getting me the doll. However, I didn’t feel a sense of satisfaction. As a 7-year-old, I felt horrified and disgusted by my own behavior. I knew that it wasn’t the ‘right thing to do’ and very soon I started feeling awful about myself. So what did I do?

The next time we went grocery shopping I made sure I behaved like a ‘good girl’ and that I never threw a tantrum again. It didn’t stop there, it was a thought pattern, that was born in my 7-year-old self and maneuvered its way into adulthood, as I began controlling what I allowed myself in situations with people and things.  The shame of thinking I was a ‘bad girl’ was so overwhelming I would make sure that I behaved in a way that was more resonant of someone good. I kept myself in line. 

We do this when we feel deep shame. We make ourselves bad and wrong for being a certain way, based on what society says is valuable and acceptable, or not. We try to control the outcomes in our lives just so that we can avoid feeling that awful feeling of being ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’. Shame erodes our sense of self; it erodes our sense of being in the world. When we feel shame we cause a split within ourselves and what develops from there are all sorts of fanciful alterations to who we are, just to avoid being ‘wrong’. These can stay with us for a really long time. We may start people pleasing, just so that we can feel ‘good’ again, even when it is to our detriment. We may start suppressing our voice and our truth, just so that we can feel like we belong. This may start to feel painful. Essentially all the pain we feel is due to us separating from our sense of wholeness. 

So what can we do in order to move out of shame? 

  • We can get honest with ourselves about how we feel about the situation.
  • We can get honest about what we really feel beyond our need to control ourselves, our environment, and our loved ones. 
  • We can find people who are loving, kind, and supportive as we speak out on our shame. 
  • We can open to our wholeness and allow ourselves to receive good things from people in our lives and from life itself.
  • We can stop apologizing for taking up space and instead say thank you to the people who are willing to hold us in our pain.

 

In love and gratitude,

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Human Connection

Human Connection

There is so much to human relating and communication. One thing no one teaches us is how to CONNECT with another, how to FEEL another, and how to RECEIVE another. Being present is a lot more than being with someone in the body. It’s a deep LISTENING to what someone is saying, but also what they are not saying. It’s tuning into their emotions and their story, their subtle movements when a part of their story is uncomfortable to relay, paying attention to their shiftiness as they try to hide their embarrassment or shame, the conviction in their eyes as they try to avoid their pain.

Have you ever sat with someone and truly allowed yourself to be their witness? To witness who they are, what they are saying beyond their words, beyond the account of their story? This is the receptive mode that allows us to open ourselves beyond the perceptions of our own stories and understandings to truly connect with another human. 

When we practice this deep listening with someone, we not only suspend our own narratives, irritations, and need to respond to what they are conveying, but we create safety from a place of presence. This foundation of safety leads to deep trust and they are the elements of building a strong relationship. It is the place that encourages sharing, not only exchanging words and accounts but sharing who we truly other with the other, sharing what matters to us, what makes us cry, what brings us ecstasy, what we fear the most, and where our deepest passions lie. 

If you practice this deep listening with someone, you also encourage them to do the same, you hold them to a higher standard. However, can you also allow yourself to be received by another? Can you allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to share your story and allow yourself to be held by another (without judging yourself or judging another for the manner in which they choose to hold you?). Watch how you may try to censor yourself to try and protect yourself from the risk of being judged or feeling uncomfortable. Watch how you may experience fear of being truly seen as you open to another human being. Watch as you experience shame in sharing your experience with another.

Bear in mind, human relating is DYNAMIC, so you may not get the same as you give (we are all at different places with relating to ourselves and that will show up in our relating with others). Being the pioneer to encourage deeper connecting in your relating makes you brave and will only leave you feeling good about yourself and your relationships.

Reflections:

  • How open is your heart to connection?
  • How receptive are you to receiving another?
  • How willing are you to be truly seen by another human being and how willing are you to truly open your eyes to see another?

Two hands reaching out to each other, symbolizing openness and connection in human relationships.
A person in deep thought reflecting on communication and connection.

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Receiving Means Giving

Receiving Means Giving

A wise woman told me once that is it important to give if you want to receive. I was fresh on my spiritual path and I had internalized this concept in a very surface-level way. So I thought: ‘Hmmm ok, I want certain things for my life and it will be pretty easy to give things away.’ A very normal and transactional perspective of any twenty-something. 

It was only in my thirties that I really started understanding the concept of giving and receiving. Sometimes we’re unbalanced in one or the other. I couldn’t understand why I was giving so much, living with such an ‘open heart’ but I wasn’t quite receiving yet. I longed to break the salary bracket I was stuck in, I wanted to experience more satisfaction in my relationships, and I wanted a better life experience in general. I gave and gave and gave, sometimes until I was completely empty. 

In my thirties, I realized that the practice of giving was only half of the journey. I would need to travel the other leg of the journey too, and that was the right of receiving. I use ‘practice’ because there is a certain amount of intentionality implied and ‘right’ because there is a certain amount of self-acknowledgment implied. I had realized that my heart was only open to the outside but to myself, it had been shut. I did not know how to receive it, it was a foreign concept to me.

It meant I needed to go a lot deeper with myself, to get real with myself about how much I thought was okay for me to receive. I took a closer look at the opportunities that were given to me by friends, so that I could receive from them and realized I wasn’t really giving them an opportunity to really give to me – I was doing a lot of the giving: of my time, of my energy, of the shiny gifts. I started noticing my behaviour with giving and receiving. 

I started slowly entertaining the idea of receiving, being gifted, and being taken care of. It was the most difficult thing to do. It brought up thoughts of being burdensome to my friends and family. It made me feel shameful, it made me immediately feel like I would be indebted to someone else. I could feel the discomfort in my body as I allowed my mind to imagine this possibility. I realized that I had been avoiding receiving it because it made me feel uncomfortable. Therein lay my work and I started removing all the distorted thinking that got me to believe it was not okay to receive too.

When we allow one without the other, we are closed off. The experience isn’t complete if we don’t experience the other side. If we realise that we are all connected and moving through this experience as one massive wave, we must also realise that when we give to others, we give to ourselves. You know how good it makes you feel to give to someone and see how it impacts them. This is what I mean. In giving to that person, you also get something from the experience. In the same way, when we receive from others, we receive from ourselves. When someone gives you a gift, you would have to be receptive to receiving that gift. There must be some sort of permission you give yourself on some level, in order to receive it. What permission or allowance are you allowing yourself to receive? It’s your giving to yourself. 

 

Once we allow ourselves to give and to receive, we come full circle with ourselves.

 

Questions To Reflect On: 

  • Are you open to fully giving from your heart?
  • Are you giving with pure intent? Or are you expecting to get something back? 
  • Are you allowing yourself to receive from other people and yourself? 
  • What feelings are you wanting to avoid by constantly giving to others?
  • What feelings are you wanting to avoid by constantly receiving from others?

In love and gratitude,

A woman's hands holding a flower, symbolizing the act of giving and receiving
quote from the post
A woman in a meditative pose, reflecting on the balance between giving and receiving.

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What to do when life gets in the way?

What to do when life gets in the way?

You know this one all too well: 

you plan to the most minute detail, to account for everything in your life until it throws you a curveball! Life’s sense of humour, when we take our lives too seriously, can really test what we’re made of. 

What do we usually do in situations like these? 

We go into a frenzy, we stress about how things will work out, we internalise the situation, and feel shame or guilt for being human. This is our default process, our unconscious and very mammalian stress response kicking into gear.

How do we respond differently to these outside circumstances that are so loud and demanding of our immediate attention?

  • We go in the opposite direction. 
  • We stand our ground firmly and how we do that is by steadying our nervous system.
  • We plant ourselves firmly in our bodies by consciously becoming aware of our breath. We allow our breath to deepen as it takes us deeper into our bodies.
  • We may play some soothing music.
  • We may feel like crying, laughing or screaming (this is the release response – letting go of all that tension that is welling up inside the body). You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity to let all that worry and stress out of your body, even if it takes you to a feeling of complete powerlessness. That is just the call for you to surrender. 

Usually when we have some kind of release, we allow ourselves to become emptier and more receptive to the information and guidance that is waiting for us. It comes in the form of inspiration to go in a new direction or to take a different action step. We may find that what has just gone wrong wants us to apply a completely new solution. All new information of the highest quality is waiting for your receptivity to be open and trusted before it can be recognised by our centers for cognition.

Most of the time, we want to know what this detour has happened, because we don’t have all the information available to us at the time. Have you ever looked back at the circumstances of your past and realised that certain things needed to happen, no matter how painful or inconvenient at the time? Looking back you can see why you were meant to stay in a place you were longing to get out of (maybe you met someone really amazing as a result or found a job that is exactly right for you in that place). We can never see the whole picture, we can only see the square that we have our feet on at the time. The thing about life is that it is constantly unfolding and we won’t ever ‘know’ for sure how things will pan out. Our work lies in trusting the path of our unfolding and also letting go of any preconceptions about our futures that are based on past fears.

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. – John Lennon

Individual practicing deep breathing meditation for stress relief
Quote on What to do when life gets in the way?
Hands releasing light symbolizing the emotional release and letting go of stress

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Old Emotions, New Situations

Old Emotions, New Situations

Our thoughts, emotions, and bodies are all connected. Western medicine and healing modalities traditionally dealt with these as separate parts – almost like a mechanic would service a car. We are slowly beginning to realise that contrary to this perspective on human beings, there is an interconnectedness between all parts these parts, they are in fact a reflection of each other and work together.

I was at my laptop and found a bill that was sent to me without a breakdown of the total amount. My immediate thought was ‘’I always get screwed over’’ and then my heart started racing away. I stepped away from my laptop to go make some tea because I saw that where I was was in an outdated version of thinking that the new me had worked very hard on purging. The old belief was ‘’I always get screwed over.’’ I understood that the belief formed an emotion within my body and that emotion prompted my body to release a chemical response that caused my heart to start racing. 

Just having the knowledge of the process helped me this time, but it wasn’t enough to still the thoughts that gripped me so tightly, trying to force me to accept them as true. I stood there, stirring the pot as I slow-brewed my tea. I identified (from past experiences) that I had to get my awareness back into my body and soften the blow to my nervous system. As I stirred the pot I started doing my deep diaphragm breathing making sure that my inhales were as long as my exhales. I focused on bringing more oxygen into my body. By the time my tea was brewed, I was feeling a lot more expansive and fully in control of my ship!

I walked over to my laptop and responded to the email and then decided to ring the sender in a calm manner to find out what the problem was. To my surprise, it was a problem with my email, and the breakdown of the statement was easily viewed from another email address. After feeling a tad foolish and remembering that this was an old identity paying out, I was able to see the situation as a beautiful reminder that ‘’I am always supported in my world’’ (my new belief to replace the distorted one).

The moral of the story – Old identities try to express themselves through new situations and if we are aware of the fact that they have no relevance to us now, we can quickly step into who we are now and what we are wanting to affirm for our lives. It takes some time to practice a new identity and it takes some time for the old versions to run themselves out of their system but every time we affirm by putting our attention on what our preference is at any moment, we begin to shift over to our new versions (and new neural pathways).

Much love!

Need more guidance?

If you want to work with me 1:1 CLICK HERE to  enroll for my coaching program where I tailor a process specifically for YOUR transformation.

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