Shame. It’s a loaded word and an emotion/experience that underlies so much of our individual and collective suffering. Unlike guilt, which is a belief that we’ve done something bad, shame is a feeling that we are bad. As described by Dr. Chris Germer, clinical psychologist and international expert in mindfulness and compassion, “Shame is an inner, invisible energy.” However, shame is certainly something we feel inside our heads, hearts and bodies.
Perhaps you can locate what shame feels like for you, or where you feel it in your body.
Although most of us experience shame to varying levels some of the time, letting go of shame often takes developing an understanding of it, how it manifests for us personally and a collective humanity, a shift in perspective and the cultivation of love, kindness and compassion.
In contrast to Buddhist philosophy, which maintains that there is an essence of a loving being in each of us, our Western world places primacy on independence and self-reliance. Even for babies. But, the reality is that the most basic task for all babies is to get their caregivers to love them—to pay attention to them, to feed them, to hold them, to nurture them. It is our birthright to be loved, to belong, to be connected—throughout our entire lives. And yet, in Western culture, we appear to have a huge prohibition against expecting this innate nurturing—think “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Essentially, anything that makes us too ‘needy’ is disavowed. We are also cautioned against experiencing too much enjoyment of our own being, lest we get a ‘swelled head.’ Also, in Western culture, we have specific, engrained ideas about what kind of people are deemed “perfect.” These tend to include biases about gender, sexual orientation, race, money, occupation, etc.
These kinds of conditioning run deep—very deep. And, they instill shame, which impacts the entirety of our individual and collective wellbeing.
The biochemicals our bodies produce when we experience shame are the same ones released when we feel threatened and go into flight/flight/freeze response. This makes sense because when we’re in a place of shame—whether because we are shaming ourselves or internalizing a shaming of self by another (think your parents, teachers, coaches, society in general)—we are in a fight against ourselves, speaking to ourselves in the same way we were spoken to. The inner critic repeats these unkind thoughts and ideas to us, and, we, as the “victim” of our own inner critic, feel caught and trapped in this inner dialogue, promoting a release of adrenaline, the stress hormone of cortisol, and other highly activating, uncomfortable neurochemicals.
However—and this is good news—our country, as a growing collective, is becoming increasingly aware of the conditioning passed to us from generations before, which has influenced our actions as a society and our behavior toward one another. Shame, as an undercurrent of our society, is a dynamic that I believe we are beginning to better understand and awaken to.
There are antidotes to shame and self-criticism—kindness and compassion—which, with practice, support and a willingness, can be cultivated, strengthened and extended to others.
The Power of Kindness In The Letting Go Of Shame
Kindness is indeed a transformative energy—much more, I think, than we assume. Our culture, so focused on competition and forcing success, creates the blockages that can keep us from delighting in ourselves and experiencing what can be profound love, joy and appreciation for our own being and extending that love, joy and appreciation outwardly to others. Rather than opening to kindness, which offers a sweetness and warmth that we can embody ourselves and infuse into our relationships, many—if not most—of us become stuck in a state of shame—that debilitating and isolating feeling that fuels almost all psychological conditions. Shame and the empty, awful feelings it creates are what drive anxiety, depression, eating disorders, perfectionism, anger, addiction and more.
As you read this quote on kindness posted by Sharon Salzberg, one of the founders of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), NYT bestselling author and a leading meditation teacher who has written extensively about compassion, I invite to consider your relationship to kindness—kindness toward yourself, kindness toward others, and any ways that kindness does or does not show up in your everyday life.
“I have been engaged by kindness nearly my whole life, fascinated by it at times, repulsed by it at others. Particularly when I was young and others extended kindness to me, I felt humiliated by the apparent evidence of my pain. I hated that anyone could see that I was hurt. And yet, now I see that those early gifts of kindness planted the seeds of a nascent self-love within me. Those seeds were really what allowed me, more than anything else, to survive the often painful circumstances of my childhood. As I got older, I was less resistant to acts of kindness, more moved by them, more able to acknowledge how important they had been and still were to me.
Since then, the pursuit of kindness has magnetized much of my spiritual journey—that is, one I got over my distal of it as an ‘also-ran’ quality, the kind of characteristic you cultivate if tougher, finer things like wisdom elude you. As I continue my meditation practice every day and try to live out my deepest values every day, kindness has only grown in importance as a crucial element of those efforts.
It is not a cushy, undemanding path. It is easy to overlook the power of kindness or misunderstand it. The embodiment of kindness is often made difficult by our long-ingrained patterns of fear and jealousy. Those around us may devalue our dedication to kindness. We may devalue it ourselves. There are many challenges, my subtleties, many intricacies. But if we can commit to the open-hearted exploration of kindness, it will reveal itself as a force that can change our lives.”
Journal Questions
I invite you to pause now and reflect on what Sharon’s quote brought up for you and, ideally, take some time to jot down some notes in your journal.
What was your experience/feelings about kindness during childhood?
What thoughts and feelings about kindness have you carried into adulthood?
What are your feelings about kindness today? Do you value it? De-value it? Does it light you up or does it feel frightening?
Do you experience any shame or guilt around being kind to yourself?
What would you like your experience with kindness to look and feel like?
How can you bestow more kindness upon yourself and upon others?
Letting Go Of Shame
Thankfully, there are ways to begin letting go of shame— even shame that’s been long held and carried too long. For me, and many colleagues I hold in high esteem, the antidote to shame, as described by Dr. Chris Germer, is self-compassion. According to Chris, shame and self-compassion are two sides of the same coin.
As explained by Chris, “In self-compassion, we reach towards, and treat ourselves, with the same kindness that we would treat a dear friend in distress.” A better term, he suggests, would be—inner kindness or inner compassion—because what is being cultivated is the internal experience of being tender with ourselves.
There are three main parts of self-compassion, as explained by Dr. Kristin Neff, author and self-compassion pioneer, which includes mindfulness, common humanity and kindness. In relationship to the cultivation of self-compassion, mindfulness helps us become aware that we are in distress and allows us the capacity to be with that distress in a non-judgemental manner. Common humanity reminds us that everyone experiences suffering and needs support. We all periodically experience situations, events, circumstances, thoughts and feelings that are distressing and can feel awful. And, finally, regardless of what is going on in our lives and in the world, we practice offering ourselves and others kindness and compassion.
Self-compassion is a way of being with ourselves, in which we offer kindness, soothing and validation. The cultivation of self-compassion enables us to bring to ourselves a protective, nurturing energy that can be helpful in moments when we feel stressed, when our self-esteem drops, when we feel criticized, when we have impulses to self-harm—no matter at what level that self-harm is. The deepening of self-compassion strengthens an inner kindness that is experienced like an inner holding environment. With an inner experience of tenderness and strength, we are more able to negotiate the suffering that is inherent in living.
Furthermore, rather than adrenaline and cortisol, when we experience compassion and self-compassion, we release blissful biochemicals, such as oxytocin and endorphins, which promote feelings of love and connection and provide a rush of happiness and even excitement.
A Meditation On Kindness—Letting Go Of Shame And Planting Seeds Of Compassion
There are many many practices that can be done to encourage self-compassion and help in letting go of shame. Here, I offer you two meditations (Cultivation of Inner Kindness & Deep and Brief Inner Kindness Trauma Sensitive Meditation) designed to help you dissolve shame through the cultivation of kindness.
Keep a look out for the next blog, which offers an invitation to celebrate the spring equinox—an auspicious time to clean out what is no longer serving you and plant both literal seeds (think spring greens) and internal seeds of love, kindness and compassion. The spring equinox is also an ideal time to get clear on your intention for the new season and what it is that you’d like to cultivate.
In kindness,
Karen