Shame Holds us Back from Our Possibilities

This is a great talk by Brene Brown.

She describes the difference between shame and guilt very elegantly here. She has done extensive research about shame, and states that it is a cause of depression, anxiety and suicide in most cultures. 

She talks about shame as an epidemic in our culture and how the media and society program us for shame. The ads that tell us how we “should be,”
 and what we “should be doing.” …to the people in our lives that expect us to live up to unreasonable standards. 

Shame can come from abuse and emotional trauma in our childhoods, and in our adulthood experiences. Shame is programmed into us by others. You can re-wire the brain with thought patterns that are more supportive for you. Shame is a destroyer.

I believe that many mental disorders are based in shame. I work with abuse survivors that carry loads of shame from their past. Even when people come to the realization that they were abused, the shame does not just go away. In fact sometimes it becomes worse, during the healing process because old wounds are being opened up. 

Walking through the programs that are in your brain is important, to be able to find the truth about yourself. You are a special, unique person.

You do not have to carry toxic shame with you.

You cannot change the past, but you can change the meaning of the memories that you carry of it. 

The people that planted those seeds were just trying to meet their own agenda by keeping you down, and unsure of your value and place in the world. 

Brene Brown makes the point that creativity, inventiveness, and change come from a place of vulnerability. Doing things that are different, and uniquely you means you have to be somewhat vulnerable.

The greatest minds of the world came up with original ideas and creations and discoveries. They were not always met with acceptance. 

You do not have to follow the crowd. You have your own voice…you just have to find it and differentiate that authentic voice from the programs that were implanted into your brain. Shame is one of those programs that is no longer serving you. 

 

Love the Loving

Love the loving people. Share your kindness and love with people who are able to love and care for people. Waste not your loving energies on people who cannot love others. 

Show compassion for those who have compassion and are capable of empathy with others. Loving people will fill your energies, rather than drain them. 

The energy exchange between two loving people will raise both of them up to a higher consciousness level. You will feel like a part of them has been added to you. This will not cause them to lose anything. 

Being kind and loving to another person who have love and compassion, will add part of yourself to them. They will carry part of you with them, but this will not cause you to lose anything. 

If you feel you are being drained bu someone, be careful not to lose yourself in them. If this is a person incapable of empathy and compassion, then they will take from you and not give anything back. 

Share your kindness and your special spiritual gifts with other who are special. It will uplift you and you will feel your love for all living things growing inside you.

Holding resentment for someone who abused you can be like a dark hole inside of you. Sharing love with loving people can help to fill this darkness with light. The more light you carry with you, the more it will surround you. Others will feel the warmth of this light that is being generated by your spirit.

Coping with PTSD and Anxiety Disorders

If you have PTSD or an anxiety disorder, some days you have to take breaks between your tasks. Different people are triggered by different things and becoming overloaded can result in a complete meltdown or panic attack.

Pushing through your day without a break to calm yourself will drain you. It can take a lot of energy to do errands and activities, when you are being exposed to triggers in your environment.

Being sleep deprived can add to your anxiety. It is important to find ways to get enough rest and sleep. If anxiety keeps you from sleeping well at night, your body and your brain may require naps during the day. Self care is important.

If you need breaks between doing things, try to think ahead to plan enough time to take them. Be gentle and adaptable with yourself.

You are your own best advocate. Draw boundaries when you need them. Think of how you would treat a friend in circumstances like the ones you are in at the time, if your friend also suffered from PTSD. 

Sometimes it gives some perspective to think of what allowances and flexibility you would offer someone else. Looking at yourself from an observer point of view can help you gain some perspective and design coping methods for yourself.

Sending love and healing energies,

Annie💕

 

Suffering and Depression

Depression is an invisible illness, but it has real mental. emotional and physical symptoms. Feelings like sadness, and grief are felt in the body. Depression is physically painful. 

If you are suffering from depression, you are not alone. But there is still  a feeling of being alone and isolated. Interacting with other people can be stressful and draining. It can be difficult to find someone to talk to that understands what your daily life is like. 

Depression is different than feeling sad about something.

This is a common misunderstanding. People know they have felt sad before, and they do not understand the difference between that and what you feel. 

There are physiological changes in the brain, in the depressed person. It is hard to know what came first with any given person. Abuse, trauma, and feeling hopeless in an intolerable situation can cause changes in the chemicals in the brain. 

“What fires together , wires together”

This is a common neurological phrase. The brain has plasticity, also called neural plasticity.  The neural pathways wire together based on thought patterns, and behaviors. This is how we learn new things and also how we develop habits. 

Good habits and bad habits are both wired into the neural pathways. Thought behaviors and negative thought patterns can be wired into the neural pathways of the brain.

Changing thought patterns can be very difficult. The chemical reaction to changing thought patterns can feel like withdrawal from a drug. 

Self destructive thought patterns can develop from having to live in traumatic situations. struggling to survive in poverty is one situation that is often discounted. Having to work at a job you hate for an on-going period of time can also create negative thought patterns that become wired into the neurons. 

Living in abusive , chaotic or otherwise traumatic childhoods or teenage years can program thoughts if being a failure, hopelessness and worthlessness. Emotionally neglected or abused children carry low self esteem, which sets negative thought patterns into the brain. 

Your situation is unique, but it can be helpful to connect with your inner child, and any fractured parts of you that were traumatized. C-PTSD is complex post traumatic stress disorder. It happens when someone is in an intolerable situation that they see no way out of. There is a feeling of being imprisoned in a threatening, painful life. 

Even after getting away from the originating trauma, the Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder continues. Many people with depression are suffering from C-PTSD and do not know it. It can help you to heal, if you discover the root causes of your trauma and emotional wounds. 

Society and the system seems to be re-traumatizing us by making us think we should feel shame and guilt.

Media teaches fear and anxiety as a way of life.

Blame is a subliminal message is advertising and propaganda. 

That makes healing difficult. Emotional wounds to the psychological self can run very deep. It may even be a kind of soul wounding. The wounds need to be given attention, in order to create new thought patterns. 

People with C-PTSD  will often fall back into depression even after getting better for a period of time. It is your emotional body is in pain, then it is calling to you for attention.

Ekart Tolle calls this the Pain Body. He teaches us to observe the pain body and accept it’s presence, when it appears. Seeing the Pain Body as an entity in itself, which is also part if us as a whole, can help to deal with it. 

He teaches that we resist our pain body due to some kind of resistance to ourselves.  Self judgement, shame  and guilt can cause us to hold into pain. We sometimes feel that we deserve the pain. This may have been programmed into us. But in order to get out of depression, we have to let go of self judgement. 

Re-wiring the brain to get out self destructive thought patterns takes some work. Eckhart Tolle says that pain can be countered with joy. This makes sense with the idea that “neurons that fire together, wire together.”

“Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible! ” Eckhart Tolle

 

 

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